TIGHT BINDING BOOK

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

By

the

same Author

HOW TO

BE HAPPY THOUGH HUMAN

NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
A WOMAN'S BEST YEARS

W. BERAN WOLFE,

M.D.

SUCCESSFUL
LIVING
Edited by

FLORENCE TOPAL WOLFE

ROUTLEDGE
Broadway House, Carter Lane, London, E.G.
1937

Made and Printed

The Mayflower

in Great Britain at

Press, Plymouth.

William Brendon

&

Son, Ltd.

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

A
1

^^^

*
j>
I*

THE BASIC EGO

>
*^

^,
*?*?

THIS book is intended to serve as a companion

volume to How to Be Happy Though Human. It
designed to give practical advice in the conduct
of the problems of everyday life, and it is
addressed, therefore, not only to those who are

is

maladjusted, but to the normal man and woman

who is from time to time confronted with difficulties

which can only be overcome by

psychological approach.

In

it

a correct

have attempted

to provide a plan for successful living.

I think we can say it is a truism that once the

problems of existence have been attacked

with insight and understanding a new light

vital

dawns on the individual who has relinquished

and

human

turnip, or a jungle animal,

addresses himself to the artistic problems of

living like a

fulfilling his destiny as the master

and the captain of his own life.

of his

To

own

soul

be sure there
are problems and difficulties over which we have
no\ control, problems which no amount of

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
training and understanding will help us to solve.
Such problems are in the hands of Destiny. In
these cases, however, I believe that I can

readers

which

how

they

can

salves the chagrins

develop

that

show

attitude

and pains of an

evil

fate.

has been

It

experience, as a practising
has often been called upon to

my

psychiatrist who
solve the seemingly insoluble

problems of human
existence, that a great many of the problems and
the difficulties that have in the past been laid at
the door of a cruel and heartless destiny are, in
reality, problems that originate in our own

The longer
feel that human happiness

ignorance or lack of co-operation.

I live, the
is

more surely

in the hands of the individual, and not in the

hands of some blind destiny.

"

The

As Shakespeare

dear Brutus, is not in our

"
The chapters of this
stars, but in ourselves
book will be devoted to wrenching some of the

said

fault,

blame for human unhappiness from the blind

"
destiny ", and putting it where
powers of
it belongs, squarely in the hands of the individual

Let

who is living his life.

me give you an example
10

that indicates

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

how much more

an individual can do with him-

he has the proper attitude toward his life.

A young man, whom we shall call John S., once
came to my consulting-room with the avowed
intention, not of curing himself of his ailments,

self if

but of getting some consolation for the cruel fate

which had befallen him.
He was a chronic
"
insomniac. He told me that he had not
slept
a

wink

"

in

two

years,

and

felt

that his failure

was entirely due to the fact that no

drug could get him to sleep, and natural sleep
apparently was not his fate.

in

life

John S. was a very ambitious young man, who

had trained himself from his earliest years to be at
the head of his profession, the law. He did very
well at school, especially because his parents,

being very proud of him, spared no expense to

give him the best education that money could
buy.

He

university

took honours in every school and

he

attended,

and

undoubtedly

he

entered his profession under the best auspices.

As long as he was protected by the fostering

long as he was
attaining the subjective feeling of successful proBut, as in
gress toward his goal, all went well.
influences of his

home, and

as

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

many
steps

other techniques and professions, the first

are not so difficult, but the difference

between

scholastic success

very great.

and actual success

is

Once

man, who had

in his profession, this young

previously brushed all obstacles

before him, found himself in competition with

the picked men of other universities and other

same time that the

new difficulties of his profession presented themselves, both his parents died, and he lost the moral
and spiritual support on which he had always
environments.

Almost

at the

The combination of
depended very deeply.
circumstances was too much for this young man
to endure. He might have succeeded if either one
or the other of these factors had remained to help
him, but with both gone, he fell into a spiritual
panic.

The

future looked dark.

He began

seeking, quite unconsciously, an excuse for his

proceed with a successful life. Faced

as he was with the exceptional difficulties which
failure to

confronted him, he
vital

felt

himself in a situation of

danger.

To

sleep in such a dangerous position, cut off

from his base of supplies by the death of his
parents, and threatened from in front by the

12

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
of unexpectedly keen competition in
his professional work, the further separation and
isolation demanded by sleep became too great
difficulties

a danger for him to face. Therefore he did not

If he were given hypnotic drugs by his
sleep.
doctor, they usually failed to effect the proper rest.

Stronger drugs, which surely and certainly compelled him to sleep, did not however make him

any more confident in himself. He awoke

from his drugged slumbers in terror, or felt that
the drugging interfered with the clear working
of his mind.

feel

Now

by

a process of unconscious elaboration,

which only the mind of man

capable of, he
accepted his sleeplessness as a fact of destiny. His
"
formula of life became
Since I cannot get
a good night's sleep, how can you expect me to do
is

good day's work

competition in
so terrifically

How

can

my work when

by

a physical fact

nor any doctor, can control

meet the keen

am

handicapped
which neither I,

satisfactorily."

Night after night John S. tossed in his sleep,

and worked so hard at falling asleep that he actuThis, of course, is
ally kept himself awake
true of a great many individuals who suffer from
!

13

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

As

insomnia.

a matter of fact most insomniacs

enough, because it is a physiological

human being can keep awake forever
prominent writer once conceived the notion

sleep quite
fact that no

that sleep was an unnecessary luxury. He

to accomplish a great deal in life and

more time for his many

fore

he

down

laid

down

his sleep.

versatile pursuits.

wanted
wanted
There-

programme of cutting
He began by cutting down the
a definite

hours of sleep from eight to seven, from seven to

from six to five. So far things went pretty

But when he cut down to four, to three
well.
and a half hours of sleep, he began to hear protests from Nature.
This writer believed that the
irreducible minimum of sleep was something less
But before he ever
than two hours of sleep.
six,

reached his goal he suffered a complete nervous

breakdown, and was compelled to give up

work

his

for a year to recoup his powers.

When

explained this case, and other similar

cases to

John

lessness

was not

S.

and demonstrated that

his sleep-

actual, but only subjective, and

he was making a little devil out of

moreover,
insomnia and blaming
that,

all

all his failures

on

this little

devil instead of accepting the responsibility for

14

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

own

his

failures,

new

light

dawned on

his

He

was making a profession of

sleeplessness, instead of working at his briefs in
He was unconsciously martyring himself
law
in order to wear a moral placard about his neck
consciousness.

in

which

his personal exoneration

was written in

After a course of psychological

John S. saw that his inordinate

large letters.
conversations

ambition was more responsible for his failure

than ever his sleeplessness was. Also, I demonstrated to

him how much he depended upon

the

constant cheers of interested spectators.

In real
life we seldom have a
gallery of cheering admirers

we

are successful in living we

occasionally reap some rewards, but to demand
those rewards as a premise of activity is surely one
to spur us on.

If

of the most successful ways I

know

of being a

failure.

In the
starter.

every man must be a self"

cannot wait for
lucky breaks ", we

art of life

We

cannot demand our cheers in advance, we cannot

sit about
waiting for the golden knock of opporFate will
tunity or the propitious moment when
smile on us.
I

To do

so

to court personal disaster.

readers are John S.'s
of

is

wonder how many

my

15

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
in their

own ways

wonder how many of you

are satisfied to find excuses for failure, instead

of taking chances on being successful human

beings ? How many of you are depending on

husbands or wives, for the

parents, children,
push that will put

you over as
many of you

being ? How
breath cursing a dismal

a complete

human

are wasting your

fate, when the same

breath, put into a song, would bring some measure

of relief to you and make the environment

which you inhabit

more pleasant place

to live in?
Of course I use this example in a
purely symbolic sense, but I want you to think of
the possible changes that would occur in
your life
a slightly

you proceeded to make your liabilities into assets?

That is the formula for successful living. The
if

great poets have turned their deep sorrows into

beautiful songs for mankind to enjoy. If you are
not too vain, not too ambitious, not too fearful,

you too

can, in your

process in your
to try

life.

own way,

May

16

accomplish this
you have the courage

II

THERE

two basic methods of approaching the

are

problems of

One

life.

is

the time-honoured

method of muddling through.

accepting

enjoying

life as it is,

suffering

This
it

when

consists of
it is

hard,

when it is pleasant, meeting or evading

when they appear. This method is

it

difficulties

typical of the animal world which has no notion

of either Time or Death, which has no realization

of

own

its

own
that

design.

man

blame

cats

Of

make

destiny conform to its

course no animal has the brain

ability to

and therefore we cannot

and dogs, lions and elephants, for

possesses,

muddling through life.

But such is not the case with man.

Man

has

the supreme inheritance of a brain, two hands

with which to grapple with destiny and to change

the world to make it conform to his needs.
Man knows that eventually he must die, and that
there

is

a short

Time,

a span of a

few years, in

which he can make something of his individual

'7

life

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
before he passes to the Great Beyond. Man has
the ability to plan, to foresee certain of the dangers

He

that lie before him.

As soon

does not have to learn to

he learns of the great

heritages that generations of other men have
live again.

graciously

left

him

he can,

as

as their private

monuments

in

he wishes, utilize the experience of these other men, and build his own life on
civilisation,

if

the steps they have already erected.

Stop for the moment and imagine

how

slow

and how uneventful the life of each one of us

would be if we had to discover fire, the lever, the
wheel, the written word, the great religious ideals,
the knowledge of raw material, of medicine, for
ourselves

We

would

still

be running about in

the primeval forests of Britain, subsisting on roots

and nuts, naked and afraid.
grow so accus-

We

tomed to the great gifts that have been showered

on us by our predecessors, that we become
obtuse to the tremendous advantages that we
have. And more. We do not realize that we too

have to carry the torch on to the succeeding

generations, and build for them a more secure,

more interesting, a safer and

If we do not live up to the tools

18

a saner world.

that have

been

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
left at

our disposal,
is

proceed to

man

not to be a

But where

claim the right to

We remain dumb

be called men.
to plan

we cannot

shall

Not

animals.

get our plan ? How can we

out our lives for ourselves ?

we

map

What fixed stars have we to guide ourselves by ?

What emotions and what thoughts shall we
cultivate, which shall we suppress and minimize ?
What is the measure of a successful man ? How
can we test ourselves to know how far we have
gone on the way of complete living ? These are
difficult problems and I am no clairvoyant, nor

My

yet a prophet.

but

can give

it

to

least it is a vision

own

vision

may be warped,

you for what

which is the

it is

worth.

result of

At

many

experiences, the result of planning lives with

princes and paupers, with intellectuals and morons,

with Jews and with Gentiles, with white

black. This I can share with you.
Before
let

men and

we make our

plan for successful living,

us look more into the nature of that mysterious

process we call life. Hardly a man is alive who

has not at some time in his youth thrown a
It may have been a little
pejbble into a pond.
lake in

Hyde

Park,

it

may have been

a mountain

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
pool in Wales.

But every

man who

ever threw a

pebble into a quiet pond has been mysteriously

which spread
concentrically from the point where the pebble

affected

by the ever- widening

circles

The
disturbed the quiet surface of the water.
process of life is very similar to that simple but

When we

mysterious occurrence.
as

human

turbs

the

beings, an active spermatazoon displacid surface of a human ovum,

deep within the maternal womb.

man

are conceived

has ever observed with his

The process no
own eyes. It is

Yet
microscopic, invisible to the naked eye.
this process initiates the marvellous changes that
finally

produce a

human

infant.

When the infant

born, the first concentric circle is formed. As

he reaches childhood, a second circle is formed.
is

With adolescence

a third,

and a fourth

circle is

which the average human being reaches. A

fifth circle represents the outer limits of a mature
that

human
human

being, and a sixth, that of the exceptional

being who approaches godlikeness in the

quality of his development.

The accompanying diagram which

have

designed to help you in the planning of your

life, is

one which

I use in

my

20

practice to

show

my

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
patients the nature and boundaries of their own
lives.
It was published first in
my book

Woman's Best Tears (George Routledge Sons,

Ltd.), but I am going to elaborate it for you here
so that you can also use it to make a picture of
your own character and your own personality.
Thus you will be able to plot on the diagram the
stage which you have already reached, and you
will also be in a position to know how you must
develop in order to become a successful personality.
"
"
I have called this diagram the
Wheel of Life
resembles a complex wheel with many
You can imagine that
rims, and many spokes.
the human character begins at the hub, and with

because

it

time grows outward until it reaches the outermost

rim. Thus it may be that you have reached the

rim of maturity in your workaday

life,

but in

your use of your

leisure time, in the organization

of your sex

in the disposition of

life,

relationships,

you may have stopped

at

your social
an infantile

or adolescent level.

Now
human
the

it

is

obvious that the ideal form that a

character should assume

outermost

circle,

the

is

circle

the form of

of maturity.

-Such a form connotes not only success in living*

21

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
but also mental,

It
spiritual, physical health.
the
rounded whole of life. If you
represents
remember your old English, you will know that

our word health comes from an old Anglo-Saxon

word " wholth," the quality of being wellIt is for this ideal
rounded, whole, complete.
that we must strive.
It must be
apparent to all
of you who read this that the strength of a

per-

no more than the strength of the

sonality
development along the weakest spoke of the wheel
of life.
Unsafe, unhappy, unsuccessful is the
man or woman whose spoke of work is highly
developed, but a whole spoke of love or friendship
is

is

incomplete.

limp and

rattle

The wagon

of his

life

must be

because of the unevenness of his

development.
In our subsequent conversations we shall take
up each one of the important spokes in the wheel
of life, and show how success can be
acquired
along each one of them. Naturally I cannot hope

to give specific directions which will suit

every
case of every reader, but I shall
attempt to stimu-

your interest and your courage first to map

out your own personality, and then to proceed to
late

improve

it.

22

Ill

THE wheel of life which is

be your guide in the

graphic representation of your character has four
main spokes, as you saw from the diagram. These
four spokes corresponding to the cardinal directions of the compass are
society, work, sex, and
In the diagram you see that the conleisure.
to

rings are spread out from the basic

personality to the mature personality represented
centric

by the outer rim of the wheel, cut through each

one of the spokes. In order to test how well
developed your personality is at the present
moment, you must place a cross mark on the
spoke of the wheel at the point where you think

you belong.
Let
are

me give you an illustration. Suppose you

man who lives a hermit-life existence.

You have no

interest in

your fellow-men

you

have no friends you are not interested in politics

or civic betterment
you accept no social responsibilities
you do not feel yourself in intimate
contact with your fellow-men it is obvious that
;

23

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

your progress along the spoke of social development has not been very great and you remain at
practically the same point that you reached

when you were

a very young infant.

Suppose,
that
are
not
human
without
however,
you
entirely

and your
social relations entirely to your family.
This
indicates that you have gone somewhat beyond

interest,

but that you confine your

life

Suppose now that

development has gone to the place

the purely infantile

circle.

your social
where you are in contact not only with members
of your own family, but a very few people outside
your family, but that your relation to society
as a whole is one of hopeless non-co-operation.

You feel

that

you

are so

weak

that there

is

nothing

change or to modify the world of

you can do
men in which you live. If you look with suspicion
to

upon most human beings and

feel that

you must

constantly guard yourself against their evil designs

upon you, and if you believe that the entire

motivated by greed and

and that
only your family and those in your immediate
surrounding environment are decent and honourworld

is

able people, then you are

stage of development.

24

still

lust,

in the adolescent

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

The

human being

average

beyond

He

this.

ma, be some

gets a

little

bit

willing to concede that there

other people in the world who are
is

not without honour and interest, but he is not

concerned with the problems of indi-

esp^ially
vidals outside his

own group,

class,

working

He accepts a certain
circo religion, or race.
amont of social responsibility, obeys the laws
whe they
they

are just

are unjust.

willingly exploit

and votes against them when

Such an individual will not

another

human

being.

But the

averge man and woman is not so organized that

whet he sees someone else exploiting a fellow-

hun*n being

he

that

the tnderdog.
Pobably a great

will

many

lift

of

up

my

his cudgels for

readers will find

themselves either just inside or just outside the

cirle of average social adjustment.
A^hat should be the goal of the mature, social

himan being
social

maturity

thrt his life

is

who has reached

an individual who recognizes
individual

of no consequence except in
contributes to the well-being of

alone

so far as his life

is

beings on this earth. The socially

>ature individual is one who not only deals

ot^er

The

human

25

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
uprightly with his fellow-men in the questions oi

everyday contact, but

sees in his daily life .ar

opportunity to enrich himself by so livingthat

his life definitely adds to the enrichment c the
spiritual lives of those

such an individual

is

around him.

not one

who

Natvally

believes

hi^wn

family the best in the world, his own frienc the

finest people, his own village or city themost

marvellous in the empire, his own country sways

the best, his own race always the nobler and

produce of God's creation.

Such an individual who has really reaced a

finest

complete

social

maturity

is

the soul of tokance

and understanding. He attempts to expeience

the desires and needs of his fellow-human kings
who are outside his own immediate circle. He
would never be guilty of condemning an entire
race or nation with the cheap method of labeling
wicked or stupid or criminal. He is usully
sceptical of the prejudices and traditions whch

it

cannot immediately be proved by science :nd

by human understanding. At any rate, such an

one who

willing to give the oher

fellow a chance to develop himself. The socially

individual

is

is

mature individual naturally

26

is

developed on

al

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
the other spokes which lie in the social sector of
the wheel of life.
He accepts his place in the
community and is happy to assume the responsibilities

of that place.

No matter what his station

he dignifies and ennobles the

position which he holds.
The more intelligent he is, the more deeply he
or his wealth, he lives in such a

senses the need of his

The more

way

that

own

personal contributions.
powerful he happens to be, the more

he recognizes that

when

valuable only
common weal.
terested in the

his
it

own
is

personal power is
directed toward the

Being an individual

who

development of the entire

is

race,

in-

he

naturally interested in developing in himself all

those techniques which would lead to a closer

is

bond with

his

fellow-men.

To

this

end he

develops his knowledge of foreign languages,

foreign ideals, foreign philosophies and foreign
literatures. He is keenly interested in the progress

He
of science and in the strategy of history.
dresses in such fashion that he knows his outer
appearance bespeaks his inner co-operativeness.
He feels, no matter what his situation, a moral

upon him to serve not only his

immediate community, but the great community
obligation rests

27

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
of mankind according to his ability and according
to the opportunities which present themselves.
It is

not given to every

human

being to develop

a high social maturity.

Sometimes physical or
environmental factors prevent such a develop-

ment.

But these

cases are exceedingly rare.

dare say there is hardly a reader of this page who

could not do more than he is doing to-day, either

human welfare or
toward human happiness. Many

in interesting himself in

in

of
contributing
my readers will believe that in order to be a

mature human being one must be a professional man, a legal power, a politician, or an
important administrator. This is a fallacy. It is
social,

perfectly easy to extend your social maturity by

sitting down as soon as you have finished reading

and writing to a sick friend or to a

friend whom you have not remembered for a
this article

page were to
write a cheering message to someone in distress or
pain, to someone who has been long forgotten,

long time.

to

If each reader of this

someone who

at this

very

moment needs

symbolic extension of a helping hand,

am

sure

wave of human sympathy would

spread from every home which this book reaches,
that a large

28

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
into

whose outer boundaries

universe

vast

nobody could

predict.
I am going to make a suggestion.
great
human
their
beings go through
many
days

unhappy and disconsolate because of some quarrel,

some bitter word, some misunderstanding that
has separated them from another human being.
I

know

that

hundreds of readers have not spoken

or written to some relative or friend for

many

months and years simply because of some stupid

misunderstanding, the exact nature of which is
probably forgotten to-day. To those of you who
wish to prove that they can be socially mature,
I am going to make a request.
I want you to
write a letter, or make a telephone call, or pay
a visit to someone with whom you have had a

person
to

how

stupid

want you

misunderstanding.

you think

have misunderstandings

short

span

of

life

to

it is

how

carry

to

tell

that

to quarrel and
useless in this

resentments

and

The
grudges for more than a few minutes.
brotherhood of men for which this world is crying
so desperately can only be established when each

man and

each

fellow-woman.

woman
Here

acts as a
is

fellow-man and a

one simple way in which

29

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

you can

effectually aid the establishment of peace

and amity in the world.
let me see you do

Now

your part.

One

of the reasons

am

emphasizing the
importance of developing a mature, social personality is that human beings cannot live alone.

There

why

some people who believe

that they can

be effectual hermits in the world, and that they

are

need make no concessions or any contributions

to their fellow-men and still be happy. This is a

We

basic fallacy.

have become so accustomed to

accept co-operation of others that

realize

how

important

it

is

to

we

fail

to

do our part in

maintaining the structure of the civilization in

which we

Think

live.

for a

moment about your

breakfast this

morning. Think of the hundreds of men, nay,

the thousands of men and women who were
responsible for getting your breakfast on your
Your coffee no doubt came from Brazil,
table.

your sugar may have come from Cuba or the

United States, the wheat which made your toast
or muffins

may have been grown

in

Canada, the

china plates on which you eat were

dug

as clay,

in kilns perhaps as far

as

Czecho-

fired

away

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
Slovakia,

with

Birmingham or

by chemists in
York, from minerals mined

New

in Alaska or Bolivia.
countless

fnade

glazes

When you

men who have

think of the

died in order that your

milk and water should be pure and unpolluted,

when you think of the work of public health

who have guarded your meat

and decay, when you think of the

servants
taint

who

against

Indians

your brown coffee beans in bags

you will have a faint notion of the

carried

in Brazil,

interdependence of

human

all

effort.

And

if

the knowledge and the

technique required in all the partial operations

you consider

further

that have finally culminated in your breakfast,

the wars that have been fought, the ships that have

been

sailed, the lives that

have been

sacrificed, the

books that have been written, the hours of painful

and careful research that have been spent so that

you can
realize

eat

how

an ordinary breakfast, you must

connected you are with the

rest

of

humanity, and how impossible it is for you to live

an isolated life. With all the world working, and
the world dependent upon other parts of the
world for the necessities of life and happiness,

all

no man may say

that the matter of social security

3

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
is

no concern of

We

his.

are

all

caught in a

huge web of human interdependence.

All the

happiness that we can experience is measured in

terms of human appreciation. All the honour

we can aspire to depends upon the goodwill of

our fellow-men. The fact that we are as secure
as we are, is due almost entirely to the age-old
that

man

tame the elements and master

the earth so that he could pass on to his progeny
and to his fellow-men a measure of security
without which life and happiness are unthinkable.
I do not want to seem a moralist. I do not want
to preach to you and tell you that you should all
be good boys and girls and co-operate in the
efforts of

to

scheme of human happiness for the sake of some

eternal reward.

Let

hard-headed,

tic,

wilL

me

be completely materialis-

scientific,

self-centred, if

you

urge you to develop social maturity as a

goal in life, as an ideal to strive for, for the reason
that if you do not become your brother's keeper,

if

you do not co-operate

in

the

social

con-

nectedness of the world, the rest of the world will

soon find out, label you a slacker and make your

life unbearable.
If you do not co-operate in the
process of social development, then

32

you have no

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

one to blame but yourself if some day an enemy,

actuated by fear and ignorance, drops a bomb
upon your house and kills you or the ones you
If you do not take up the cudgels for
love.

human

happiness, then it will be your fault if

some day the disaffected elements of the world

up and wrench from you by force the security

and happiness that you now possess. If you do
not cultivate friendships and human interests,
then you have but yourself to blame if you find
you are bored and unhappy. If you do not

rise

develop an active social co-operation, then you

have but yourself and your short-sightedness to
blame, if men recognize the fact that you are
not a co-operating member of society and rob

you of your liberties by main force either by

The
putting you in jail or in a madhouse.
commonjsense which is the heritage of civilized
living is your most precious possession.
substitute for this common sense, which

co-operation and
friendliness,

social

feeling,

Do

not

means
tolerance and

generosity and altruism, the stark

and unhappy private logic of the individual who

lives for himself in solitary and insecure egocentricity.

33

IV
TRAINING

for the

development of social maturity

begins in early childhood and lasts until death.
The individual who wishes social maturity must

work

No

task every day of his life.

opportunity for developing this most valuable of
all human traits must be allowed to
slip by.
at

this

Nevertheless, the exceptional or socially mature

person is very rare. On the second spoke of our

wheel of character and

life,

the spoke of work, a

high degree of maturity is relatively more common

than on the spoke of society. The reasons for this
are not difficult to determine.

So great

is

the

gnawing of our stomachs and so great the emphasis

in our age on economic security that it is far less
difficult to demonstrate to an individual the
importance of having a job than it is to demonstrate

the

importance of being

socially

well

adjusted.
The discussion of the place of work in our world
touches upon a great many sore spots. There are

34

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

some

socially

immature individuals who

believe

thoroughly in the fundamentalist doctrine that

work is a curse, that the world owes them a living
and that the less they have to do to get that living
the happier their life will be. On the other hand,
there are a great many individuals who have in
the past been interested in exploiting their fellow-

human

It
beings under the guise of religion.
would take us too far afield in these articles to

discuss these theories or to

go into the history of

human

exploitation. From a psychological point

of view, we can trace the development of work

and work attitudes very clearly.

In the first place, the infant works

at

the

important job of discovering himself and his

His own body is
relation to the environment.
the object of his work, and the pleasure derived
from self-observation is the greatest pleasure that
the individual knows.
Now there are a great

many grown-up
still

people who, psychologically, are

infants in that the focus of their lives

on themselves.

These peoples

is still

are the ones

who

make

a profession of their health, their feelings,

their sentiments and their pleasures, and any other

work

that they

do

is

purely incidental to the main

35

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
job they have of looking after themselves.
psychological name for such an individual
Narcissist.

This name

is

The
is

derived from the Greek

legend about a youth named Narcissus, who was

so in love with his own body that when once he

was admiring himself as reflected in a pool of

A dismal
water, he fell in and was drowned.
fate which is not uncommon among Narcissists.

Many

of

them do not drown, but become bored to

death because they have no proper outlet for their

Somewhere between early infancy

and childhood we come to the stage at which the
work of an individual is called play. ( The play
is
exceedingly important as it is really work for

vital energies.

the child.

Through play

the child learns about

the wbrld and things that are in it and his ability

to modify and create new conditions in the world

which he lives.
There are some individuals who grow up physiIf
cally but never get beyond the stage of play.
you are a playboy who has never done any serious
work for the sake of work and for the sake of the
value to be derived from the modification of the
world in which you live, then you must put yourself down on the work
spoke as an infantile inin

36

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
If

dividual.

all

work you do

the

consists

in

amusing yourself, playing at games, going from

one pleasure to another, killing time to the best
of your ability, then you have not learned how
to work, and a mature work attitude is still far

beyond your horizon.

In the case of the adolescent work

is

done

in

school, but only seldom is it done spontaneously.

Perhaps the vast majority of work in the world
is

done by individuals who

are, psychologically,

not because they want

to, but because they have to, or because it is
traditional for their class to work, or because it is
adolescents.

They work,

the local habit for individuals to work, or because

of the fear of disapproval and punishment if they

do not work.

This

typical of the small schoolapproaches his school tasks with an

feeling that he would rather be out

boy who
unhappy

is

playing than working in school.

Beyond this is the level of the average individual who does not exactly work simply because

he has

to,

a certain

but

who works

pay which

for a certain salary or

he then devotes to purposes

which he himself has chosen, such

as the

support
of his family, the pursuit of knowledge, the

37

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
If you
gaining of social esteem and the like.
ask the average human being why he works,
he will say that he works in order to be paid,
so that
alive.

he can gain the things that will keep him

But if you ask why he wants to live, he

be able to give you a very

He works because he is
satisfactory answer.
motivated by certain blind biological forces of
will generally not

He

works because without

self-preservation.
working he will starve.

Beyond

this

rim

lies

the circle of mature work,

the goal of every intelligent human being. The

difference between work and mature work is that

the worker works because he

knows

that the

product of his labour not only gives him a certain

spiritual and inner satisfaction, but also contributes
to the

common weal and

him

the respect of
As we go along in these discushis fellow-men.
sions, you will become increasingly aware of the
earns

fact that, while for the sake of clarity I have

diagramatized life as a wheel within certain

actually the wheel

has no spokes because they are so close together
and so intimately related, so intimately tied up
definitely

labelled

spokes,

one with the other, that

it is

38

impossible to separate

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

them except
it

is

for purposes of illustration.

Thus
inconceivable that an individual should be

socially

immature or

infantile,

and be occupation-

or mature. Occupational maturity

ally superior
implies a realization of the value of one's labour

man whose vision is

brotherhood of man can possibly

to his fellow-men,

focussed on the

and no

waste his time in childish play or self-amusement

That individual is happiest whose work accom-

two ends simultaneously. The mature

worker satisfies some inner craving for complete-

plishes

ness in himself in a fashion that

is

also valuable to

human beings.
Let me give you a

other

concrete example. Suppose

you were crippled as a result of an unfortunate
accident and you made your work in life the

invention of a wheel-chair which would enable

to enjoy more thoroughly and
the association of your fellow-men.

you

more
If

easily

you

in-

vented a wheel-chair and shared your invention

with other cripples, thereby contributing not
only to your own happiness and financial security,
but also to the greater happiness of a vast class of
unfortunate
called

human

beings, then

mature worker.
39

you could be

Or, to take another

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
example,

you had been hated,

if

badly dealt with

mistreated, and

and you made your

as a child

work the development of a better system of

education which would help other unfortunate

life's

children to realize their place in the world,

would be a mature worker.

you

born
with an unfortunate weakness of the eyes and
you compensated for this weakness by working

example again, you were

If,

for

an

artist, as

a person

a poet, as a philosopher, as a teacher

of the blind or in any other capacity which
as

would increase the world's

vision as well as

your

own

happiness, then you would be a mature

worker.

Now it

apparent that often both opportunity

and means of training are not adequate in a
is

definite individual in sufficient degree to enable

him to become a really mature worker. Many,

many
go

individuals are inclined to let the matter

They find excuses for

with their own lives and spend

at that.

better

not doing
their

time

bewailing the fact that they have not been born

into an environment which would enable them to

be mature workers.

reprimand

want

to leave a very sharp

for such individuals because men and
I

40

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

women who do

nothing but excuse themselves

for not doing more in the world are really just
as childishly self-centred and just as infantile
as those

who do no work

at all.

In every job there is the opportunity for

No matter whether you are sewing
creativeness.
buttons on overalls, digging ditches, sweeping
out offices, running errands, or pasting labels on
bottles.

No

seem, there

matter
is

in

it

how

menial your work

may

an opportunity for creative

reconstruction.

To

who

compelled by circumstances entirely beyond his control, such as the

present unemployment situation, to be idle,
the individual

there

too

is

opportunity for creative work. All

individuals who find themselves on

is still

many

the dole, subsisting on the State, or on relief,

are content to follow the path of least resistance

and spend their time wasting time.

Perhaps
what a man does with his leisure time is more
indicative of his attitude towards

work

many

work than

his

In a world which requires a great

menial, uninteresting, and unimaginative

itself.

jobs to be done, there is, nevertheless, enough

time after the job is done for any worker who is

41

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
interested in developing a mature work philosophy
to develop himself and to develop his creative
responsibility to the world in which he lives.

A man who

remains idle simply because he is

not being paid to work shows that he really does
not want to work at all.
'If all

the idle

men

in the world

were to spend

their time in bettering the situation immediately

within their power, a great deal of useful and

Life is so
profitable work would be created.
constituted and the human brain so exquisitely
developed that the opportunity for adjustment
in the world

of

work and

creation

is

always

present.
In the past we of the Western world have been
interested in work almost entirely for the money
that

we have gained from

it,

and that money we

and frivolous waste.

have usually spent in useless

In the East, which thousands of years ago, in
some respects, reached the stage which we are now
beginning to enter, the idea of working for the
sake of beauty, for the sake of satisfaction in a
job well done, is much better established than

We

Westerners who, used to

travel in the East, laughed at a man who sold an

it is

in the West.

42

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
ivory object on which he had worked for three
years for a few shillings, are now in the position

where the carver has the laugh on

What we

us.

failed to consider in the price of the carving,

which

cases the carver did not especially wish

was the deep, inner satisfaction of creating

in

many

to

sell,

something, of testing his powers in changing an

inert piece of material into a beautiful design.

hope that the breakdown of our

economic civilization which we are experiencing
It

my

is

to-day will teach us all a lesson. The lesson that

I hope it will teach us is that there is a kind of

work more important than gainful employment.

Those who are gainfully employed always ask
of a job,

"

What do

I get

"

out of

it ?

This

is

typical of the adolescent who feels himself

insecure and therefore can only work for gain
which will apparently increase his security. The

mature worker works for entirely different philoHis attitude towards the job
sophical reasons.
"

is

not,

can

What can

get out of
"

put into it ?
deserves to be paid for
I

Such

"

it ?

but

a mature

his labour

"

worker

and should not

work without pay. Nevertheless, the pay

for the

job will not be the prime quality or the

43

What

final

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

end that determines whether the job

is

good

or bad.
that the present critical world
situation will not lead to other wars, other human
It is

my

hope

exploitations, other campaigns to enslave one set

of human beings for the benefit of another set,

but that

it

world-wide renascence

will usher in a

of the artistic spirit so that men will make greater

journeys of exploration and discovery into the

men

push back the

borders of ignorance and fear of death and
and that
disease, of poverty and unhappiness
realm of the

spirit

that

will

they will find their reward in the attainment of

t hose ends.
Also that it will lead to a renascence
of individual artistry and craftsmanship.
This
brings us to the third basic spoke in the wheel
of

life

and character

the spoke of leisure.

44

WE now

come

to the consideration of a

spoke in our wheel of

At various times

in

life

the

third

and self-development.
world's

history

the

problem of leisure has lapsed into the background

and been relatively unimportant. These were
times when human beings were so pressed by the
rigorous nature of the obstacles they had to
meet that when they finished the day's work
they could do no more than drop into the Nirvana
of sleep in an attempt to recuperate their powers
for the next day's struggle.

In such ages the

problem of existence presented so many difficulties that the mere work of keeping body and
soul together was all that a human being could
do. Under such circumstances men and women
devoted

their

entire

creative

problems of preserving
minent danger.

energies

themselves

to

the

from im-

partial result of the intense work of those

bygone ages has come to us in the social residues

45

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

which we

call

Human

only living things that make

Because of the organisation of our

are

beings

culture and civilization.

history.

the

we

are able to pass on to our fellow human

beings the result of our own experience, and the
sum total of these experiences accumulates in a

brains

form which we call civilization, and enables us

to meet new
problems and so solve old ones

Can you imagine how

would
be if each generation of human
beings had first
to invent the art of
making fire, of fashioning
easily.

clothes,

of

building

wheels and levers

form of

of

shelters,
Little could

art or creation if all

focussed

difficult it

constructing

be done in the

our energies were

on the main problem of preserving

ourselves.

Because of the marvellous

gift

that

human

beings have for preserving the products of their

experience in the written word, the actual

problems of existence for any man or

living to-day have become materially

The more

woman
easier.

which we
live, the more protected we are against the sudden
loss of
security which in the case of the savage
spells destruction and death.
(Hardly a man
successful the civilization in

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
living in a civilized

community to-day

worried about where his next meal

is

is

vitally

coming

from.) If he cannot earn it for himself, at least

society will take care of him and provide suste-

nance for him.

We

are so accustomed to taking

for granted the vast repositories of knowledge and
technique that have been built up in the course of

centuries
realize

of civilized

living,

how dependent we

that

we do

not

upon the former

We do not realize

are

struggles of our ancestors.

how great is our debt of gratitude toward the
Most of the heroes of the human race,
past.

most of the

men who have

contributed most

gloriously to the security and comfort of our

unfortunately remain unnamed. No one

knows the real inventor of the knife, of the lever,
These are the
of the wheel, of the first boat.
lives,

great heroes of

Strange as

it

human
may

progress.

seem, the security that the

man

experiences in his daily life in a

civilized community is the source of one of the

average

greatest problems of

modern

times.

It is a

prob-

lem which no human being can escape or deny.

As a result of the progress of engineering and
science, the actual work of maintaining one's

47

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

own

existence has been reduced to an absolute

minimum.
for a

Not many years ago it was necessary

man to work eighteen hours out of the

twenty-four in order to keep body and soul

together. To-day the hours of labour are becom-

Human beings are

ing progressively lessened.
actually paid not to work in order that the
make

products of their labour shall not

conditions

more

living

difficult for the rest of

humanity.
In the industries which used to require twelve
and fourteen hours of work, six or eight hours of
labour a day are now the rule.
Science and
technology have given

man

new

gift,

the gift

of time.

The

Bible writes that Methuselah lived to be

And
age.
various dignitaries of Biblical times are so reputed
to have reached very ripe old ages.
Perhaps
more than eight hundred years of

these records are not entirely trustworthy, for

in the memory of history there are very few

instances of

hundred
ages,

men who
As

years.

new

extremely

baby's

slight.

actually lived beyond one

a general rule, in bygone

chance

Death and

of

was
war and

survival

disease,

pestilence, as well as the natural rigours of life

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
conspired to make his expected span of life a
short one.
New-born children died by scores
and no one knew the cause. Now, with the rise

of

modern medicine,

ancy have

the problems of

been changed.

life

expect-

baby born into

a civilized community to-day has an excellent
chance of living out his three score and ten years
of

age.

More and more

people are living to be

sixty and seventy and even eighty years of
Fewer and fewer children are having their

life.

fifty,

also

extinguished before they have really begun

to live.
Medicine, and I use the term in its
broadest possible connotation, has also given us

lives

all

new

gift-time.

Between the efforts of science to make our

work less arduous and of medicine to make our
days longer, every

human being who

is faced with a new

is

living
in the present age
problem,
the problem of the use of spare time. That is
the reason why I have made the solution of the

problem of leisure time one of the cardinal spokes

in the wheel of life and character development.
In our day and age no human being who does
not solve this problem constructively can lay
As a psychiatrist, I
claim to any happiness.

49

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
have seen a growing number of individuals, who
in the former
days of hard work were able to
meet the problems of life and solve them satis-

becoming the victims of their

the problem of leisure time. It

factorily,

inability

to solve

is

"

proverb
to

do

".

that Satan finds mischief for idle

I

would

saying that

by
occupy

"

an old

hands

like to enlarge this

proverb
Satan finds mental quirks to

minds ".
More and more individuals are finding that
idle

their entire life's happiness is being stifled because,

during the years of active preparation for the

problems, they have not taken

care of the fact that one of life's problems is the
problem of the utilization of their leisure.

solution of

As

in

life's

the

case

of social

development and

occupational development, the development of

a mature attitude towards spare time goes through

The very young

very definite evolution.
At least, the
child has all leisure and no work.

work of the young

personal

quest

child consists of the highly

for an understanding of his

The baby works to

immediate environment.
find out where its mother's breast is, works to
swallow its mother's milk, works to discover the
5

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

own

difference between his

little

and the

toe

bedpost, works at the job of crying when he

is
unhappy and uncomfortable. All this work
is

of no

possible interest

to

of the

the rest

world.

There

some individuals whose

are

towards leisure time

attitude

almost infantile in that

is

they spend any spare time they have in concerning

themselves with their own bodies and their own
If

feelings.

work

to

you

are an individual

do and contributes nothing

and who spends

all

who

has no

to the world,

his time inactivity

which

your own body, your own

feelings, your own thoughts, your own wishes,
then you have developed only to an infantile

is

centred

about

level.

At the next

level of

development the use of

comparable to that of a child who cries

when he has nothing to do and wants to be

leisure

is

amused.

There

are a vast

number

of

human

beings who, while they have proceeded beyond

the infantile level, have stopped at the second or

somewhere between infancy and

adolescence, where they believe that the world
owes them a living. Such individuals want other
childish level,

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
individuals to spend their time amusing them and
they are unhappy if they are not being amused
all

offer nothing towards this

but simply consider it their right and

the time.

They

amusement,
privilege and prerogative
far as their attitude

to

be amused.

towards leisure

they have not grown up.

At the next level, the adolescent

is

So

concerned

level, leisure

The
personal problem.
adolescence wants to be amused, but in his amusestill

remains a

fairly

ment he often remains passive and expects a

maximum of activity from the outside world.
For example, there are individuals whose only
amusement in life, whose only use of leisure time
consists in

going to cinemas and being passive

spectators of the

work of

They take
same way that some

others.

movies almost exactly in the

people take alcohol or drugs, as a narcoticizing

escape from the realities of the stern existence for
which they are not prepared. The Average person
gets somewhat beyond the point of being merely
a passive spectator who amuses himself by watch-

ing the antics of clowns or cinema actresses and

participates

somewhat

in

his

Thus, the average individual

52

own amusement.

will also

attempt to

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

amuse himself by participation in games of various

kinds in which he contributes something to the
progress of the game.
Finally,

we come

the individual

to

who

is

psychologically mature to the point where he

recognizes that spare time is not only a curse*

but also an opportunity and a responsibility.

These individuals understand that the tremendous
creative

forces

which

former

in

times

were

directed towards the solution of the problem of

self- and race-preservation, must not go
entirely
passive preservation, must not go
entirely wasted in passive participation of time-

wasted

in

time-wasting, time-annihilating games.

individual who has reached the mature level

killing,

The

on the spoke of
realizes that

leisure

is

an individual

he has within him

a certain

who

God-like

quality to create and re-create the world in which

he lives. This individual has a more or less

conscious
time.

He

programme

for the use of his spare

has hobbies and avocations, some of

which help him to develop his own creative

instincts and others of which bring him into closer
contact with men, nature, animals, and the inanimate world.

His hobbies arc not only passive

53

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
but also active, not only recreational but also
creative

and

artistic.

At the peak and outer rim of the spoke of

leisure,

we

find those individuals

who spend

their

time, their spare time, in the creation of works of

art or beauty or usefulness of such importance,
that in the satisfaction of their creative urges they
also contribute something of value to the civiliza-

which they live.

As you have seen on the diagram, there are a

tion in

number

of associated spokes next to each of the

shall take
main spokes of the wheel of life.

We

up these accessory spokes later on in our articles.

But for the present time, I feel that it is most
important that each one of us plot out on these
four cardinal spokes his position and his development, because no matter how well or how badly

you may be developed on the accessory

spokes,
the measure of your success as a human being,
eventually depends upon the limits of your

development along these chief avenues of human

effort.

54

VI

WE
I

come now

to that important spoke

labelled sex.

have

which

The

sexual impulse, perhaps one of the most

powerful urges within the human body, also

goes through a definite evolution in the course of

The sexual life of the
any one individual life.
fixed entirely upon himself. At first it is
generalized and the child loves his entire body,
his finger as much as his toe, his toe as much as
infant

is

his nose, his

nose as

much

as his genital organs.

Gradually his interest tends to focus upon the

genital organs themselves.

Now
who

there are a great many grown-up people

because of vicious training and bad education

have remained completely at an infantile level

as far as their sexual development is concerned.
They never get beyond living with themselves.
Their own bodies are the most precious bodies
in the world and they spend endless hours in
self-loving and self-gratification.
55

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

Beyond

this

stage,

but

in the infantile

still

those individuals whose love has got

beyond their bodies to a certain extent, but has
remained fixated, as the psychologists say, upon

state, are

one person, usually a parent.

In the case of both the little
boy, the

first

love

is

girl

and the

There

the mother.

are

little

many

people whose sexual urge remains fixated upon

their mother for the entire extent of their lives.

Sometimes, in the case of the

little

girl

and

occasionally in the case of the little boy, this

love becomes transferred to the parent of the

opposite sex or individuals very comparable to

Later in childhood the love instinct
the father.
is

members of

directed to
c

girls

develop

own

sex.

Young

Young boys develop hero

crushes/

worship for athletes and

boys.

one's

soldiers, masters or older

Little girls fasten their love

upon

actresses,

famous characters in history or fiction.

In a world in which there is so much mis-education on the subject of sex, an ever-increasing
mistresses,

percentage of the
adolescent

human

race

Not

is

remaining at

infrequently individuals who have not gone beyond the point of

loving members of their own sex, but who are
this

level.

56

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
intellectually, misuse their brains to
rationalise and justify their failure of develop-

grown-up
ment.

Individuals
are

level

artistic

who have remained

occasionally

and creative

highly developed

lines.

point

of

this

along

They draw the false

in work and creation

conclusion that their ability

"
result of their
is the
pureness ".
psychological
"
"
is
purity

at

view

no more than
ignorance, egotism, and the

this

From

so-called

synonym

failure

for

of proper

social
<'I

development.
can lay down an important psychological

law of development at this point. It is impossible

for an individual who is socially undeveloped in
the psychological sense, to be sexually well
I mean
developed, in the psychological sense.
by this that while an individual may be physically

mature and able to

live a

normal sexual

life, if

development has not progressed to a

mature level, he will surely misuse his sexual

his social

development in the service of some neurotic goal.

A great many individuals who apparently have
developed a high degree of sexual virtuosity

which at first sight would make us say that they

were extremely mature, are not able, as a matter
E

57

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
of fact, to enjoy their physical maturity because
psychologically they remain at an infantile or
adolescent level of social development.

me

Let

give

you some examples.

man

If a

has

physical maturity, but finds that he

cannot love a woman and contents himself with
to

grown

auto-erotic

and

thing,

practices, it can
that is, that he

only one
deems himself the
signify

company for himself. His social world

is
bounded by his own ego. He has not
the courage to make a friendly gesture towards
fit

only

him

to

This

beings, and every woman appears

as a dangerous threat to his own ego.

human

other

is

why

auto-erotic

so

many

practices

individuals
lead

such

who

resort to

isolated

lives.

used to be believed that such practices lead

It

to insanity.

This

is

a silly and unfounded notion.

lies in the fact that
they lead

Their only danger

to social isolation and
sin

against

being

social isolation is the

nature which no civilized

one

human

may commit.

beyond the level of adolescence, but

not quite up to the normal level, lies the point
at which are found those human beings who
Slightly

regard

members of

the opposite sex as their

58

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
natural born enemies, and

who

use their sexual

maturity in order to enslave or to dominate or to

Such
tyrannize members of the opposite sex.
individuals have the courage to find love where it
naturally should be found, among individuals

of the opposite sex, but they have not yet the

courage that

required by sexual co-operation.

is

Perhaps the average

human

being gets a little

way beyond this point, and finds a mate, among
members of the opposite sex, marries, assumes the
responsibility of that marriage, brings children
into the world and assumes the responsibility,

according

to

his

degree

of

development,

of

making them useful citizens of the world.

What do we find at the mature level ? At the
mature

level of sexual

case of social,

ment,

mere

we

development, as in the
occupational, and leisure develop-

find individuals

necessities required

who go beyond
by the

situation

the

and

creatively construct the relationship into a positive

and beautiful contribution to the world in which

they

live.

There

are

men and women who make

"
I and You,
marriage something more than
Ltd." These are the individuals whose marriage
"
can be designated by the term
We, Ltd."

59

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
Marriage is one of those tangential points at
which the world of the individual and the world of

For many people who

society come in contact.
are normal, average, human beings, the world
of
is

"

and You

say this
it

"

which

delimited by marriage,
also the world of social relations.
I do not
I

is

bad.

might be.

tion of
social

"

is

not as good as
In the mature individual, the creaI say

We, Ltd."

only that

is

it is

not only a solution of the

"

and sexual problems of

and You

",

but also a very definite contribution to the outside

of the family circle. In other words, those people

whose marriages are mature in the psychological

sense are the individuals whose rrfarriages not
only satisfy both partners from a purely sexual
point of view, but go over into the social realm
where the marriage becomes a significant and

valuable social asset.

At the very rim of the spoke of sex are those

rare and brave individuals whose marriages are
not only the complete solution of their own
private sexual problems, but also models and
ideals for other less courageous human beings to
follow.
relatively

mature marriages are

devoid of the extreme fire and passion

Many

of these

60

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
that are

common

in marriages at the adolescent

or average level.
But instead of the fire and
passion they are characterized by the beauty and

depth of their creativeness, not only in the sexual

but also in the occupational, social, and leisure
spheres.

Now

that

we have

discussed the four cardinal

spokes on our wheel, I want you to mark off on

each one of these spokes, as honestly and as sincerely
as you can, the point which
you have reached in

your individual development. It might be a very

good idea also to discuss this problem with your
friends.

Each of you can make rough diagrams

of the wheel of

ment thereon.

and chart your own developThen it might be a very good idea

life

you took your own evaluation of yourself and

compared it with that evaluation of yourself
made by a friend or relative. Discuss the points
at which discrepancies appear.
Try to avoid all

if

The first step toward successful living

vanity.
lies in
stripping off from your own self the veils
of self-deceit and hypocrisy.

you cannot progress

in your

own mind,

already perfect.

It

if

It is

obvious that

you delude

into believing that

must be apparent
61

yourself,
you are
also that

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

you consider yourself mature and all your

friends consider you adolescent or, at best, average,
something is awry with your judgment.
When you have cleared the ground for yourself
by charting your position on the four cardinal
points you have also become the master of a very
if

plan for future development towards

successful living.
If you find that you have not
definite

developed beyond the infantile or adolescent levels

on any one of these cardinal spokes, do not be
too

ambitious

and

do

not

attempt

to

leap

immediately and over-ambitiously into maturity.

Strive first to be average before you seek to be
mature.

You may

rest assured that

only a very
few individuals in your environment will have
This is
reached true psychological maturity.

which results only after years and years of

I doubt very much whether true psychoeffort.
logical maturity can be reached before the age
a state

of thirty-five or forty in all but the rarest cases.

Remember that the goal of successful living
the well-rounded,

mature personality.

If

is

you

have reached a considerable degree of development on one spoke, say in the sphere of work,

do not

rest

content until you have progressed

62

at

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
least as far

on

all

After you have

the others.

charted your progress on these cardinal spokes,

you can well sit down and make out for yourself
a five-year plan of future development. Take it
Successful living is not a product of a day
easy.

or a week, of a

month

or even a year of effort.

not a static, fixed thing, it is

Successful living is
a process which no one ever finishes.
If

you have

never reach

set

it.

yourself a definite goal

you can

The

goal I wish you to set for

are to derive the maximum benefit

yourself if you
from these conversations,

is

moving goal

in

which you are accomplishing the double objectives of self-mastery and adjustment to the world
in which you live.

VII

Now

we have

fixed our cardinal points on

the compass of the wheel of life, and you have,
I
hope, checked off your development along the
that

spokes

of

leisure,

we

adjustment, work, sex, and

will proceed with the analysis of the
social

four next most important radii along which

must strive to further your development.

The

first

of these, which

lies

you

midway between

It must appear
society and work, is education.
as a truism that a man who has not all the educa-

tion that he can possibly obtain, is an unsuccessful

man. It used to be believed that when he had
finished school, college, or university, education
was at an end. He received a diploma or

degree

man.

and

this

To-day

previous ages

man

considered

it

to receive

is

himself

surely not the

may have been

a

an

educated
case.

In

possible for a

formal education and then

through the rest of his life, secure in the

"
knowledge that he was
prepared for life ".

idle

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

To-day the world is changing much too rapidly

for any such state of affairs to exist.
The

who

individual

is

successfully

educated

to-

day, conceives of his education as a growing

process.

Education must proceed not only in formal

schools but through the newspapers, magazines,

and books, through the drama, through the

cinema and through the radio, which are the
No one is ever
greatest educators of to-day.

mark

of an

the constant struggle for

more

finished with an education, and the

educated

man

is

and more knowledge.

On our wheel of evolution

some individuals remain

they are not educated

at

obvious that

an infantile level

if

Such illiterates are

Not to be able to read

is

surely a characteristic of an infantile

The adolescent attitude towards

is

not

education.

education

is

at all.

exceedingly rare to-day.

and write

it

much more beyond

that.

Here

the individual learns only what he is compelled

to learn under the compulsory education system.

He

is satisfied

"

with the

minimum knowledge

of

reading, writing, and 'rithmetic ",

and does not trouble his head to go beyond this.

the three

r's,

65

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
At the average level is the individual who has had
some kind of formal education, who has gradu-

from
ekes out a more or
ated at least

the

medium

secondary school, and who

less meagre education through
a

of the Press, and the radio.

The

average man's attitude towards education is that

education is something of a chore, that any
education that comes to you painlessly is all right,
but that any education which requires continued
effort and
study is not worth the trouble.

Beyond the average level are those individuals

who are fortunate enough to have had a university
education.

But

must say

point that the

not at all the mark

at this

mere possession of a degree is

of an educated man.
There are a great many

who

because of their position or wealth

ate exposed to the education given in our univer"
"
sities.
However, that education does not take
people

so

to

speak.

Such individuals

see

in

college

nothing more than an opportunity for pleasant

social and athletic associations and not an opportunity for education.
It is good to remember at this point the derivation of the word education. Education means the

process of drawing out.

66

Some

individuals are

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
not given the material to be
drawn out by the learning process. They are not
constitutionally

be blamed for being ignorant.

The vast
number of educated people, however, are either
to

too lazy to be educated or too disinterested in

education to exert the necessary efforts to make

education worth while.

really

mature educa-

tion implies the willingness of the individual to

be educated and he seizes every opportunity to

broaden
far as
is

his

mental and intellectual horizons

they can be extended.

as

Thus, true education

a relative matter.
I

remember once having

Vienna.

hailed a taxicab in the

When

the taxi did not respond,

I went over to arouse the driver whom I thought
city of

to be asleep. I

poems

with

found him instead studying Keats's

the

aid

This

man

of

German-English

I later

learned had been

dictionary.
born in one of the slum districts of

Vienna and
had never had a chance for more than the most
rudimentary form of education. And yet he was
an educated man because he allowed no opportunity to improve his
his menial occupation

panion of

all

mind
he

to slip by.

felt

Despite
himself the com-

the great minds whose writings he

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

had studied during the lonely hours when he

was waiting for a fare.

Thus
had

important for a
university education to
it

is

and

researches

in

studies

the

man who

has

continue

his

of

the

light

opportunities which his university education has

given him.

mature attitude towards education implies

that an individual is doing everything within his

power

to

make

available to himself

all

knowThe mark

the

ledge and all the training that he can.

of a superior education, of course, goes back
the criterion which

we

tc

will so often use in the

understanding of successful living and that

criterion of social usefulness.

Many

is

the

a learned

and erudite bookworm who can quote innumerable lines of forgotten poetry or endless statistical
information is in reality nothing but a literary

miser and his knowledge is not valuable either tc

Such a literary or intelhimself or to others.
not really an educated man because
the essence of education lies in the sharing oi

lectual miser

is

That man who studies only for himsel:

and who shares none of his knowledge with hii
fellow-men is not a successfully educated mar

education.

68

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

no matter how much knowledge he actually has

acquired from books.

Never before
education been

in the history of the world has

so easily available to those who

Museums

of every conceivable kind are

constantly open to those who wish to learn, and
the staffs of those museums are technically trained

seek

it.

to help any seeker after knowledge to satisfy

More and more the newspapers and
his needs.

the wireless are becoming aware of the fact that

they have a social message to give, a social opportunity to be of inestimable value to those whom
they serve.
social

Throughout the world

consciousness

education.

has

affected

Time was when

the

growing
field

of

education was con-

sidered the prerogative of the lord and gentleman.

To-day it has become the necessity of the

commoner

as well as the

gentleman.

you want

to live successfully you must understand the world in which you are living in order

If

that

you may cope with

petent fashion.

must have

its

In order to

at least a

problems in a comlive successfully,

you

bowing acquaintanceship with

the ideas which

move men and with

methods which

men

the technical

utilize to affect their ends.

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

No human

who

successfully educated
neglects the opportunity to teach those who are
less educated than himself.
There are some

being

who

individuals

is

are not psychologically prepared

the teaching themselves, but they can be

helpful in disseminating the knowledge of other
to

teachers

who

are

can participate in

better

prepared.
Everyone
In the beginning

this teaching.

we

usually learn from books and from the direct

teaching of our teachers. But as we grow older

new world of
And if we wish
a

must

education

is

opened up

to us.

to be successfully educated we
accept the opportunities that are present

and use them.

Many

do not learn so much

they do from the contact of their

adult individuals

from books

as

Seek out the company of those who

more than you and learn at their feet.

fellow-man.

know

no disgrace. But to remain ignorant

when knowledge is at hand is the mark of a
The constant
slovenly and undeveloped mind.
searching after knowledge, both of things and
of people, is the one search which is most valuable
and most lasting in its benefits to human beings.
Compared with knowledge, money and title are
Ignorance

is

70

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
of

little

value.

need not go further into the

There

none so
blind as those who do not wish to see and none
so stupid as those who do not wish to be

importance of education.

educated.

are

VIII

WE

come now to the second of the secondary

spokes which we have entitled health. At first

may seem

sight

it

does

not

living,

to

belong on
because there

that this spoke really

the wheel of successful

you
is

no

typical

infantile,

adolescent, average, mature, and superior

of health.
But I believe I can show you

form

how

our pattern of successful living.

There are some individuals whose chief concern
in the world is their own body.
Their bodies
may be grown-up, relatively healthy or relatively
We are not concerned with this so much as
sick.
with the psychological attitude of these individuals
to their own health.
No one will gainsay that
physical health is one of the most precious
this also fits into

ingredients of successful living. Yet, paradoxical

as it may seem, some of the most successful human

beings in the world have been human beings

whose bodies were sadly degenerated or sadly
racked with disease.
The rostra of the great

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

minds of antiquity, as of the present, is the rostra

also of cripples and deformed bodies, misshapen
and ugly bodies and of many, many hours of
sickness and travail of pain.
It

is

some indiby nature with more healthy

Here again, it is
neighbours.

apparent, at

viduals are gifted

bodies than their

first

sight, that

not the actual health that counts in the matter of

much

the problem of
what individuals have done with their bodies and
success in

so

life,

their health.

The

as

it

individual

is

who

spends all his

time worrying about his stomach-ache, fretting
about his indigestion, who spends countless hours

meddling with
development

complexion or a life in the

of his muscles, is an infantile
his

individual.

There

are a great many

mistakenly believe that a

human

beings

body composed of

a sign of success.

huge, bulging muscles

is

cheaper magazines are

full

who

The

of the advertisements

who

attempt to delude and dupe

their readers into believing that if they can

of charlatans

develop magnificent biceps and triceps they

will be successful human beings.
Nothing could
"
be further from the truth. Most of these
big*

73

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
muscle

who

men"

are really grown-up individuals,

are so obsessed with the narcissistic love of

their bodies that they have little time left for the
enjoyment of the finer and higher things of life.

exploit other human beings whose sense

of inferiority leads them to believe that if they

They

can develop huge bulging muscles they will also

develop fine personalities and master minds.

No human

being

can

compete

with

the

muscular development of the common flea. And

yet the flea could hardly be taken as an example
of successful living. If you look around you, you
will find that the individuals who have developed
the greatest brawn usually have the dirtiest and
hardest jobs to do, whereas the smaller, less

muscular and more intelligent members of society

are those who direct the work and enjoy more of
its fruits.

The world is full of neurotic men and women

who run around from one doctor to another
attempting

to

heal

imaginary ailments.

themselves

of

minor

or

In so doing they often

achieve a spurious success by being ill. There

is no doubt that the helpless baby is a tyrant over
his household, and many of these individuals

74

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

whose only profession

the goal of health

are, psychologically, individuals who tyrannize
over their environment by the power of ill-health.
It

would take us too

in life

is

far afield to discuss all the

forms of hypochondria and all the devices with

which individuals who have not grown-up, as
regards their health,

use

to

make themselves

apparently important by being ill.

At the adolescent stage in the psychological
attitude towards health we find a slightly different
attitude.

The

adolescent

is

no longer so

inter-

body as the infant. What he is

attempting to do is to show by his swaggering
ested

in his

disregard of

all

known laws of health how

and how different from other

the

omnipotent he is
Thus, there are a great many
people he is.
individuals who, so far as their health is concerned,
take needless and sometimes even insane risks
with their health in order to prove the validity
of their ego.
I mean, for example, those individuals who have a constitutional aversion to

wearing mackintoshes in bad rain storms or

proper overcoats in the winter. Individuals who
expose themselves unnecessarily to cold or heat

and who shun the ordinary precautions

75

that

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
has

medical

science

disease.

This bravado

discovered
is

will

prevent

often the mask

for a

hidden egoism, which, when unveiled, proves far

The
less noble than it appears at first sight.
average individual takes a reasonable amount of
care with his health and quite sensibly rushes to

when he feels that he is seriously ill.

When we speak of a mature attitude towards
health we come again to a discussion of the social
values of health. The individual who recognizes
a doctor

the importance of maintaining his physical health

in order to maintain his usefulness to his fellow-

men, who

at

the same time has a certain stoic

disregard for the minor ailments which beset

the flesh, might be considered a mature individual
so far as his health

individual
is

is

is

concerned.

The

superior
often an individual whose health

bad or whose organs are defective.

theless,

this

superior

compensate for

individual

Never-

attempts

to

his physical inferiority

by training
by developpsychic compensations which serve

his organs to superior functioning or

ing certain
to cancel out the physical inferiority of the organs.
Here again history is full of stories of individuals

who have been

blessed or cursed with very

ill

and

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
feeble bodies, but

who, nonetheless, have led

magnificent and successful lives by virtue of the

courage which they have brought to bear upon
their problems.

The

history of

human accomp-

not likely to regard the exploits of

individuals who were the most perfect athletes or

lishment

is

women who won

beauty prizes and contests.

Rather the history of human achievement will be
the history of men and women who despite

physical handicaps have carried on and accomplished their goals of social service.

word might be

said at this point

about the

current over-evaluation of youth and physical

vigour. One of the relics from the age of feudalism, when the individual counted less than he does
to-day,

marked

the cult of the hero, which also has

the individualism of the machine age.

is

hero and the beauty prize winner

has served to place an undue emphasis upon

This

cult of the

physical beauty and physical brawn. I, for one,

encourage the education of children in all sports

and in

all activities

ment of healthy

which

bodies.

will lead to the develop-

The

Latin adage

"

mens

sana in cor pore sano ", a healthy mind in a

healthy body, has a certain amount of truth in it.

77

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
But it is
lovely ideal for which to strive.
necessarily true that the cultivation of a

It is a

not

healthy body is a guarantee of a healthy mind.

In any insane asylum one can find examples of

which house sick and

degenerated minds. Likewise some of the finest
minds of modern times have been housed in
almost

perfect

bodies

almost unpresentable bodies.

Only in rare instances is the Greek ideal of physical beauty and
mental perfection found together. Of the two,

mental soundness or physical perfection, our

times place the greater premium on mental
soundness.

A man

with a sound mind and an

unhealthy body can be a successful human being,

whereas a man with a sound body and an unhealthy mind surely becomes a failure in the
terrific competition of modern times.

The

advice about health, therefore, is this.

Be as healthy as you can. Use the services of

every doctor who can restore you to physical

But if you are physically unsound
soundness.
constitutionally, do not believe that
this in itself can be a bar to successful living. It is

from birth or

just as important to realize that the

body

is

middle-aged

incapable of the storm and stress of the

78

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

young body

as

it is

to realize that the

young mind

incapable of the mental gymnastics of the

mature mind. As you grow older, it is wise to

is

submit to physical examinations of your health

at regular intervals.
Do not be a squanderer of

your health, and

at

the fact that health in

not an end of

life

the

same time recognize

itself

physical health

is

but only a means to successful

living.

79

IX

WE

come now

to the third

of the secondary
and that is the spoke

points on our wheel of life,

of religion. This is manifestly a difficult subject
to deal with in a way which will be satisfactory to

men and women

is

of

all

my feeling that

religion.

every
But I do not

and

religions

human

beliefs.

It

being must have a

mean by

this that

every

human

being must belong to a church to be

successful.
There are two very good kinds of
The first of these, and the more
religion.
formal religion.

you are a good

Catholic or a good Protestant or a good Jew or a
good Mohammedan, and you find the answer to all
your problems in your faith, and you have chosen
this faith by yourself, then I say, you are on the
highway to success so far as religion is concerned.

common,

is

If

The need
profound

for a religious faith

in the human breast.

things that a
a religion

human

that

is

savage does

helps

him
80

to

one of the most

One

of the

first

to get himself
face the cosmic
is

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
problems which are around him. Some faiths
are more primitive than others.
But every faith
represents the statement of a relationship between an individual and the vast cosmos in which

he

Some

lives.

faiths are formal.

become crystallized and organized.

armed with dogma and ritual and

They have
They are
sanctuaries.

And many

individuals are perfectly willing to

accept such faiths as the final statement of their
Sometimes these
relationship to the cosmos.
individuals

become very narrow-minded

bigoted and believe that their faith

faith that

is

the only

valid.

Other individuals prefer

selves their

is

and

own

to formulate for

religions.

Such

them-

religions can

and be good religions even though the

concept of God does not enter into them.

exist

seem, these individuals

may be just as good religionists as a Catholic
or a Lutheran.
The essence of religion lies in
Paradoxically as

it

may

the complete surrender of the individual to a

power or force beyond himself and beyond his

comprehension. In every religion there

an element of irrationality, and the strength

logical
is

and power of a religion

81

lies

in

its

symbolic

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
statement of faith and in the symbolic renewal
of faith through ritual. To rob religion of ritual,
faith,

and symbolism

to rob

is

it

of

its

essential

character.

But

human

beings are different, and every

human being may symbolize his relation to the
cosmos in an entirely different way. Thus it is
all

perfectly possible, that a Catholic receiving

com-

munion, living through an age-old ritual may

experience a tremendous religious feeling, which
at the same time, a scientist, whose religion is the
search for knowledge, may experience an almost
exactly comparable religious ecstasy, in the discovery of a new star or a new microbe.

On

the wheel of successful living, we can say

that infantile religions are those in which superstition

and the

belief in

responsibility for

magic and the shifting

human

oi

acts to a deity are the

The

prototype of all religions is the blind

faith of the child in the omnipotence of its
rule.

and from

a purely psychological point oi

view, those people who pray to God for small

father

favours, and those individuals

diety to help
still

at

an

them

who invoke

the

in their petty concerns, arc

infantile level.

82

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

At the adolescent level of religious development we find those individuals whose religion is
doubt and scepticism, and wlio are interested in
breaking idols rather than in building them.
Many an individual who believes himself irreand goes about destroying other people's
illusions about religions and God, is not as

ligious

clever as he thinks he

is

because he has not yet

learned the necessity of faith in human life. By

destroying the faith of others, he does them no
service and he does himself only one service, of
inflating his

ego

at the

adolescent level, also,

At the

expense of others.

we

find the fanatic

who

is

bigoted and intolerant of other people's beliefs.

He is cocksure in his knowledge that his own
religion

is

and must be the best religion in the

The

average man has a faith of some

kind, but he is not entirely clear as to how he got
it or what it means.
Often he slips into the faith
world.

of his fathers.

Sometimes because

it is

the most

convenient solution of the perplexing problems

of the why and wherefore of his own existence.

When we come
religions,

we

find

to the consideration of

those individuals

mature

who have

thought through and struggled through to a

83

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
religious concept

whether those be found in a

formal religion such as Catholicism or Judaism or

whether it be in an informal religion such as
atheism

whether

this

mature religious feeling

of
personal religion
service to one's fellow-man or to service to one's

expressed in a purely

is

or

art

As

science,

have

makes very

said, the essence

of

little

difference.

all

religious feeling
lies in the personal surrender to a force or moveSuch a religious
than oneself.
ment
I

greater

in the ecstatic enjoyfeeling can be experienced

ment of nature, or of the wonders of life shown in
the microscope, in the profession of healing or of
ritual of the
teaching, as well as in the symbolic

orthodox

religions.

When we

reach the superior level of religious

the
social factors
development, we find that the
factor of usefulness to one's fellow-men

of serving
Perhaps the noblest way
in nobly serving one's fellow-men.

predominant.

God

lies

become

84

WE

come now

spokes on our
called

to the fourth of the secondary

wheel of successful living, which is

objectivity,

the

scientific

name

for

the

In a sense, this
faculty of seeing life as it is.
spoke is the key spoke of the entire problem.
Yet it is the most difficult to describe. Here we
are concerned with such problems as objectivity

and subjectivity courage and cowardice respondependence and

sibility and irresponsibility
and of the general philosophical
independence
;

attitude towards

Let

When

me

tell

life.

you

first

what objectivity means.

an individual is faced with a difficult

problem, say an examination, and meets that
problem by studying for it as well as he can,
and then takes the examination, confident that he
will do his best and that eventually he will be
normally successful, we say that such an individual has an objective attitude towards the
examination and has a high degree of objectivity

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
in his conduct.

Objectivity implies the rfccognition of the seriousness of the problem, the proper

preparation to solve the problem and the courage

to go ahead with the solution.
Let us consider

human conduct as a globe. The

north pole of this globe we shall call objectivity.
Let us see now how a purely subjective individual
the world of

would meet the same problem of the examination.

One type of subjective individual would magnify
the examination and its seriousness a thousandfold, and because he was burdened with a sense
of his own inferiority would believe that he could
never pass. After this, instead of studying for his
examination, he would weep and bewail the fact
When he
that he was fated by destiny to fail.
goes to take the examination, having trained
himself to fail, he will shiver and tremble with
fear, lose all his faculties,

and write an even worse

paper than he would have written, had he simply

gone in with the purpose of writing what he knew

and omitting what he did not know.

Another type of subjective individual would
minimize the seriousness of the examination.

He would

consider

it

a sinecure,

would spend

the time that he should have spent studying, in

86

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
playing golf, or billiards, or dancing, would walk
into the examination hall with a great show of
bravado.

He would

attempt to delude the exami-

ner with his superficial knowledge. Subjectivity,

which is the south pole of our globe is characteristic

of the child.

Objectivity

of the adult, mature mind.

The

another way.
in
his

life,

individual

is

characteristic

me
who is

Let

put

it

in

objective

they are and knows

powers, does the best that he can and

sees the difficulties as

own

assumes complete responsibility for his failure or

The subjective individual is one who
success.

he has no control over the eventual

outcome of his life, and feels that he is an unwitting

.believes that

pawn

in the

hands of a powerful destiny which he

cannot control.

Objective individuals are the

battle-dores in the game of life.
Subjective
are
individuals
the shuttlecocks. The objective
individual assumes the responsibility for his acts.
The subjective individual evades responsibility.

The young

infant

individual.

He

is

completely subjective
draws the world into himself

and exists at the expense of the world, and assumes

no responsibility whatsoever for his own existence.

As

the infant grows, he grows

more and more

in

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
the direction of objectivity.
For example, the
very young infant is completely subjective. If

move himself from an unpleasant

he moves himself out of it. The adolescent

he wishes

to

place,
child accepts

limited

responsibility,

major problems of his life he

his grown-up environment.

The

average

human

being

still

is

but in

depends upon

a curious mixture

of objectivity and subjectivity.

The average
individual can be found somewhere near the

equator on our globe of values.

responsibility for earning his

himself clothed

and

fed,

own

He

has the

living, getting

finding a mate and

beset by his enemies.

defending himself if he is
But he is perfectly willing to

shift the

respon-

sibility for the status of his nation or community

to political leaders who are more objective than

he

is.

The mature

one whose objectivity

is based
upon a mature sense of self-esteem. Such
a sense of self-esteem derives from the average
individual

the other problems on

Thus the more successful

or mature solution of
the wheel of

life.

is

all

an individual is in solving his social, occupational,

sexual, and leisure problems, the more objective

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
he

The more

is.

unsuccessful an individual

is

in

solving these problems, the more likely he is to

blame fate, or God, or the times, or his heredity
for his

own

shortcomings.

Naturally, a completely objective human being

does not exist. Such a human being would be an
Nevertheless,
angel, or at least a great hero.
no human being can attain success in life without

This
attaining a high degree of objectivity.
It
the most valuable quality in human life.

crown of

so to speak, the

human

all

human

virtues

is
is,

and

you have gone beyond

the equator and are making progress towards the
north pole of objectivity, then you are indeed a

all

conduct.

If

No person who

fortunate and unusual individual.

no person who
angered by petty annoyances
harbours resentments and hates
no person
who weeps when he is frustrated no person who
is

falls

head over heels in love

believes that

money

believes in luck

can

is

power

call

no person who
no person who

himself truly objective.

To

be an objective human being you must know

not only the world in which you live, and develop
a sound

judgment of its

developed,

also,

values, but

a creative

and

you must have

artistic attitude

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
towards

The

courage to meet obstacles

and to accept defeat and still go on. You must
life.

independence of thought, judgment,

and action. You must be free of all human beings
and at the same time bound to them by the ties

develop

of

In order to be
sympathy and interest.
objective, you must know your own limitations
and you must be free of complexes of all kinds.
The objective individual does not worry and is
not afraid, except before the major mysteries of

He

and faces death calmly.

He does his day's work as hard as he can and
plays as hard as he can. He assumes the respon-

life itself.

sibility for

lives fully

the welfare of his fellow-men.

The

objective individual has a sense of humour. He can

laugh at himself and still go on doing the best that

he can.

He

is

strong in adversity, generous in

victory, patient, well-poised, serene, and basically

If the objective person has a tinge of
optimistic.

pessimism, he is at least optimistic enough to try

to make the world a better place to live in. Dogs

and babies, servants and menials, superiors and

leaders, all respect the objective person.
is no respector of rank or station.

tivity

be objective

at

any

level of intellectual

90

Objeccan

One

and

social

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
development, but naturally the finest and highest
forms of objectivity can be found only in those
individuals

who are educated

sufficiently to

under-

stand the world in which they live, and who have

mastered the mechanics of living to such an
extent, that they are artists in the use of the
material which makes living successful.
If you are objective, you must focus your

aggressive tendencies against the forces of evil

and darkness which beset the world. The objective individual has

He

grudges.

no time

for private hates

and

hates only sickness, war, stupidity,

ignorance, and human exploitation. The objective individual recognizes the inferiority of the
human body and the human mind, and does his
best

to

make

it

stronger

and

more

perfect.

The goal of being objective and living an objective

life, is the highest goal for which a human being
can

strive.

XI

WE have now " boxed the

"

compass

of the wheel

of successful living, at least so far as the cardinal

compass points are concerned. The reader who
has studied the diagram carefully and checked
his development on the four cardinal points of
social adjustment, occupational adjustment, sexual

development, and the adjustment to the problem

of leisure, will already have gone far in the understanding of his status as a citizen of the world. If,
in addition, he has also checked his development
in the fields of education, health, religion, and
above all objectivity, he will now be in a position

and have an outline of

his personality development.
Using the rim of
maturity as a guide, he will know where he will
have to exercise the greatest efforts to develop
himself into a complete, healthy, and successful

to connect these points

human

Now

being.
let

us go round the clock and take

92

up

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
separately the secondary spokes which complete
the wheel of successful living.
will begin
with dress. This is a subject whose interest dates

We

back to the dawn of antiquity. It is a subject that

men and women will still be writing about two
thousand years from to-day. Originally clothes
served but a single purpose
to protect us from
:

the inclement elements.

To-day, that primitive

purpose which might be amply served by a raw
bearskin thrown over our shoulders when it is
cold, and a simple cloth when it is warm, has

become modified by the conditions of our

civiliza-

The

lady in her evening toilette is often

more uncovered than covered, and similarly the

tion.

man

in white tie and

tails

hardly requires the

paraphernalia of starched bosoms and wing collars

to keep out the
wintry draughts. Dress has been
wrenched off from its primitive purpose and be-

come an instrument of
our time. That is why

the great social need of

I

have placed

this

spoke

so close to the cardinal point of social develop-

ment.

The

clothes

you wear

indicators of

are

often

the

your social attitude. It is apparent

that the tramp or beggar in rags is not interested
especially in the attitude of people toward him.
93

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
anything he uses his rags to evoke a sometimes
undeserved sympathy from those who see him.
If

That

the beggar

actually perverting his

clothes into an anti-social means of attaining his
is,

ends.

is

The dandy and

Beau Brummel,

the

apparently at the opposite end of the scale, are

not interested in making an adequate impression

on

they want to compel atten-

their neighbours

tion.

Their

over-dressing is psychologically
comparable to the rags of the beggar.

Men

have been writing about the psychology

of clothes for thousands of years, and many of

them have remarked important

truths

the

in

psychology of dressing. Take, for example, the

"
We must
statement of Cicero who wrote
:

present an appearance of neatness, not too punctilious or exquisite, but just enough to avoid

mature point of
The American writer, Emerson, pointed

slovenliness/'

view.

This surely

is

out the importance of being well dressed in his

"

Letters

and

Social

Aims when he wrote

The

sense of being perfectly well-dressed, gives

feeling of inward tranquillity which religion

powerless to bestow.

"

Benjamin Franklin, in

94

a
is

his

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
u
Poor Richard, counselled
Eat to please yourThe incomself, but dress to please others/*
parable Lord Chesterfield in his Letters, summed
:

up the mature attitude toward clothes with the

"
words
Take great care always to be dressed
:

your own age, in the

whose dress is never

like the reasonable people of

where you are

spoken of one way or another,
place

is

neither too

"

negligent or too much studied.

Most of the quotations that can be found on the
subject of clothes deal with the psychological

Clothes can be both

aspect of this subject.

self-

As in other
expression and communication.
spheres of life, that form of dressing which
combines the best elements of both these important needs

This

to say, that a
man has the opportunity in his clothes as has a
woman to express his originality, individuality
is

the best.

and unique personality.

is

Whether

this

be in the

choice of colours or in the choice of cut, whether

through the fabric or through the design, each

individual strikes a note in his dress which indicates not only his self-esteem, but his attitude
toward the rest of the world. From a psychological

point of view, basing one's self-esteem

95

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
entirely upon the clothes one wears
to be considered a grave
fallacy.

is

naturally

No human

being who senses his worth solely in terms of his

vestments can be considered a successful human
being. At best he
clothes rack.

may be

In the dim past of

women

considered a successful

human

history

clothed themselves in order to

day, unfortunately, a great many

live in order to clothe themselves.

men and
live.

To-

human

beings

Where

clothes

no importance to the individual or where

clothes are the be-all and end-all of an individual's
existence, we must speak of his development
as being at an infantile level. When so important
a social function as the clothes we wear are
are of

solely the object of individual concern, we

are dealing, psychologically, with a narcissistic

made

perversion. Either the individual is not awakened

to the necessity of social relations, in which case,

he pays absolutely no attention to

his dress

beyond

covering his nakedness, or where the individual

lives simply to dress himself in finery for personal
self-gratification regardless of the effect that his

dress

may have upon

the feelings and sensibilities

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
of

others,

an

only

infantile

stage

can

be

credited.

At the adolescent

level the

problem of clothes

experiences an interesting metamorphosis. The

adolescent individual is
usually in rebellion
and
in conflict with, the world in which
against,

he

with the world of authority.

not sure of himself, and his lack of inner

lives, especially

He

is

makes him want to demonstrate a

spurious
means
of
exhibitionistic
conduct.
superiority by
So we find a great
individuals who have
security

many

reached

an adolescent

level,

who wear

only
such

clothes as are calculated to shock the sensibilities

of their neighbours or to
exemplify a spurious
and purely adolescent
uniqueness. We often see

boys who wear atrociously garish clothes

in order to
compel the attention of the outer
world. It is as if these
young men were deathly
this in

of being overlooked and are

signalling
attention to themselves as if
were
they
saying
"
Don't overlook me."
See, I am here.
Also at the adolescent level there are individuals
afraid

who

are using their clothes as an anti-social

means
of power. Such individuals
pride themselves on
the fact that they have more
expensive clothes

97

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
or

more fashionable

clothes than their neighbours

and they are constantly exhibiting the fact to all
their friends.
can say that those individuals

We

who

always to keep in fashion, whose sole

aim in life is to appear in the latest frock from
live

Paris, are individuals

cent

of

way

who

They

life.

are caught in an adolesare so afraid that they

be up to the minute that they rush from

one dressmaker to another and they are constantly
will not

in a panic lest their neighbours appear with a

newer hat or a later frock.

Because

this is

still

a man's world, the habit of

perhaps more common among

women, who, being placed in an inferior role by
choosing fashions

is

their menfolk, are compelled to use this method of

establishing a specious superiority. The world of

fashion

is

individual

world of slave morality.

is

The

average

neither a slave to fashion nor does he

recognize the importance of the psychology of

clothes as a positive social gesture.
Few people
know that if they clothe themselves as well as

they can, and in the best

taste,

There

individual

who

is

no doubt
is

clothed

on

their neighof the fact that an

positively beneficial social effect

bours.

they exercise a

in

an

appropriate

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
fashion,
niceties
effect

and with an adequate appreciation of the

of dress, has a cheering and encouraging

upon those who come

in contact with him.

own

sense of correctness and well-being is

communicated to others, around him, and this

His

communication has doubly beneficial effect not

only upon himself, but upon those with whom he
comes in contact.

At the mature level, the individual follows the

advice which Polonius gave to Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet :
"

To

Costly thy habit as thy purse

But not too costly."

dress less well than

may buy

you can

afford

is

false

To dress more
humility.
expensively than you can afford to dress is a sign
of infantile exhibitionism.
To dress in such a
modesty and

false

fashion that your dress becomes the object of

conversation is bad taste. Those people are best-

dressed whose clothes suit and

occasion perfectly, and therefore

remark nor

At

fit

them and

call forth

the

neither

attention.

we must also speak about the

human beings to hide behind uni-

this point

tendency of

99

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
forms.

Especially in England it is possible to

say that a man is a Harley Street physician or a
bank clerk or an ex-army officer by the way he
dresses and

by the way he wears

his clothes.

tendency is a sign of feudalistic

adolescence, and is a relic of the time when human
beings had to express their position and worth
Perhaps

this

through their costume. Many people hide

behind the uniform of dress, and while this may

solely

be a time-saving device,

certainly does not

bespeak either a high order of creativeness or
originality and surely not a very high order of
it

social feeling.

At the superior

level so far as dress

are those individuals for

and others

is

an

art

their creative efforts

may
from

is

concerned

whom dressing themselves

and vocation, and who, by

in the line of costume design,

actually help to emancipate human beings

their fears, from their traditions and from

their prejudices.
Thus, the individual who first
designed a soft collar for men must be considered

a great benefactor of men, just as the individual

who discovered a substitute for the unhealthy
dress of the Victorian age must be considered a

benefactor of womankind.

100

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

Each individual can

find in his

costume an

expression of his original relation to the cosmos

and an expression of his relationship to his fellow-

men.

Not

successful.

to

women

to

make

use of this

is

to

remain un-

Perhaps this device is more important

than to men, as a rule men are inclined

to dress in uniforms.
their costumes

But even

men

can change

and by the appropriate use of

dash of colour here, or a piece of jewellery there,

lend spice to life and flavour to living.

101

XII

WE pass now to another subject in the quadrant of

the social

life,

and that

is

nothing more than

reality
social conduct.

politics.

Politics

a crystallized

is

in

form of

Political parties are the tradi-

tional expression of certain set ways of acting

toward your neighbour. If you are a Tory, you

believe in the division of wealth, in

Americans

what the

"

rugged individualism/' in power

to the strongest, in the maintenance of the
status

call

quo so far as

human

opportunities are

concerned and so far as the distribution of human

power comes into question. If you are a Liberal,
then your attitude grows out of the feeling that
each human being should have the opportunity
for developing to the limit of his capacities, and
that a variation of

human

expressions is desirable
and allowable, and that there is not any limit to
the development of the individual except his own
will to develop.

munist, then

If

you

are a Socialist or

your point of view

102

is

Com-

that

the

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
wicked and wrong, and that the
down-trodden masses must be preserved by force

existing order

is

from the rapacious exploitation of those who

are to-day in power.
It is not for me to preach a political doctrine,
although those of you who have read with care

my

insistence

upon human

human development must

stand

rights

and

upon

be convinced that

somewhere near the Liberal

axis.

From

the point of view of successful living it really is

not essential that you choose one party or another,
that you belong to the right, to the left, or to
the centre, but that you belong.
An infant has no political thought and no
political position.

any

An

political party.

infant

He

is

is

not a

member

of

out for himself, his

own

food and drink, which is his most immediate

He has no other concern beyond the
concern.

satisfaction

individual

own needs. Therefore, an

who when he has reached the age
of his

of maturity, has not been able to find himself a

place in any political party, who does not exercise

the hard

won

right of the franchise is, psychologically, an infant. There are some people who
say that they are not concerned with politics.

103

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
But

who
is

every man's concern, and a man

apparently not concerned with politics
is

politics
is

an individual who does not cherish his own

independence of thought nor his own freedom of

Not to be interested at least to the
expression.
point of reading and
political

movements

is

studying and discussing

a sign of social irrespon-

mental retardation or psychological infantilism.

These harsh words apply equally to
sibility,

men and

to

Every man and

women.

woman who

reaches the age of maturity lives in a community,

and the politics of that community are an

immediate responsibility of the individual who

comprise

it.

fellow vote

The

"
is

attitude of

"

nothing more nor

let

the other

than the

less

attitude of despairing infantilism which attempts

to solve the problems of the world in which the

infant exists.

common

Such

political nihilism

in the countries

has been established

where

is

political

all

too

freedom

by the bloodshed of

past

incommensurate with successful

A man or a woman must feel a sense of
living.
allegiance to some group of other human beings.

generations, and

is

That group of human beings must voice itself in

some kind of political doctrine. I am not here
104

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
say that any one of the existing political
doctrines which are to be found in the world

to

superior to any or all of the other

doctrines.
History alone can hand down the

to-day

is

and I do not make claims to being a

prophet. But this I can say, that when political

verdict,

movements occur which run counter to the

will of the people, which wrest
away from the
individual his liberty of thought and action and
feeling, then

it is

usually the individual

who

has

immature, who has allowed his

neighbour to do the voting for him, who makes

been

politically

the loudest outcry

when

his political liberty

is

lost.

The

adolescent attitude toward politics is very

characteristic.
The adolescent approaches the

problem of

politics

not with reason but with

prejudice. He belongs to this, that, or the other

party for such spurious reasons as that his father

belonged to the party, and his grandfather belonged to the party, or because all the nice people

neighbourhood belonged to the party, or

because there were pretty girls in the party and

in his

In other words, the adolescent individual admits his allegiance to a political group,
the like.

105

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
not for the sake of what he has to offer to that

group, but simply and solely for the sake of the

immediate selfish advantages he may derive, or
as in the case of clothes, the adolescent individual

uses

his

gratifying his

There

are

own

lust for

whole

adolescent in their

on

attachments as

political

means of

power.

movements which are

philosophy and which depend
political

appeal to the basic aggressive and

It is a notable
sadistic impulse of the adolescent.
their

fact that children are far

When you

more

cruel than adults.

party whose basic

a cruel intolerance of other people,

find

political

philosophy is
you may be certain that

its

leaders and philo-

sophers are themselves psychologically immature

individuals.

The

average individual admits to some political

activity and interest, if not in a larger and more
social sense, at least in the

immediate sense that he

contributes to the political government of his

own small community. In England such a
political

awareness

is

highly developed.

The

English are perhaps, from a political point of

106

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
view, the most mature individuals in the world.

The

average Englishman knows more about his

government by far than the average American or

This is due to the fact that

the average German.
the political adolescence of England is hundreds
of years past and the average Englishman is the
inheritor of a rich parliamentary tradition.
The mature individual is, of course, that
successful

human

being in

whom

the personal

striving for significance and the desire to better

the conditions of his community, of his nation,

or of international affairs are simultaneous and

synonomous.

This

is

the individual

successful in the social sphere that

who

is

so

he recognizes

interdependence of the happiness of all

human beings, and whose political doctrine, therethe

fore,

is

based upon

human

tolerance and

human

co-operation. This individual not only reads and

studies the political situation of his time, but
actively participates in those causes which he
believes are important for the establishment of
the common weal. He is not above sacrifice of
his personal interest to his political convictions.
This mature and successful human being brings

to bear

on

his political

thought

107

all

the other

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
social graces that

he has acquired in the lifetime

of successful living.

You will

usually find that those individuals who

are successful in life will be successful along most

of the spokes in the social sector.

You

will find

that they are friendly and co-operative individuals

who dress well, who speak well, who dance well,

who know the history of human thought and

human institutions and who are interested in the
It is almost
progress of human knowledge.
impossible to conceive of a man who wears sloppy
clothes and dirty cuffs being a politically mature
Self-esteem is the basis of social
individual.

and

political maturity.

Where

there

is

an un-

complex you can find only

aggression and hate and intolerance. Where you
find self-esteem you will find tolerance, co-operasatisfied

inferiority

tion, social vision,

and

interest.

108

XIII

Now

us continue with another aspect of the

social life, and that is the point of clubs, societies,
let

and organizations. Since the beginning of time

human beings have been welded into groups by
special

interests.

distinctly

Some

anti-social,

of these

such as

groups

gangs,

are

criminal

But most clubs and

conspiracies and the like.
organizations are either actively or at least,
An indipassively social in a beneficial sense.
vidual

who

by himself
successful.

lives a hermit-like existence entirely

is

usually an individual
may have to bar

We

who

is

from

not
this

category certain great geniuses, the quality of

whose work was so intense and so far-seeing that

they were misunderstood by the people of their
time, and, therefore, had to lead a solitary existence.
Their lack of belonging to clubs and
organizations was not an indication of their
anti-social nature, but rather an indication of the
stupidity of the society in which they lived. The
109

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
hermit and the infant belong to no clubs and to
no organizations, because at their level of develop-

ment

interest in a club, in a

Any man whose

only club

only organization

is

his

<c

is

we
his

unknown.
family, whose

", is

own immediate

hearth

psychologically, an infant. He has

neither found himself nor has he found the way
circle is

still,

to his fellow-men.

At an adolescent

who belong

level

are those individuals

to clubs because "it

the thing to
do ". As in politics they misuse the clubs or
organizations as a means of social power or prestige
is

means of spuriously raising themselves above

their fellow-men.
Such individuals like to show
off and exhibit the insignia of their various orders.
We find them joining many fraternal organizations in which they can raise themselves to
artificial positions of
power, and bear grandiloquent titles and wear insignia which would put
as a

a Pasha or a Rajah to shame. The role that these

secret organizations play in the lives of indi-

viduals burdened

by an

complex is
the role played by the cinema
inferiority

something similar to
for others.
In the case of the films the inferior

no

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
individual identifies himself with his favourite

and believes that thereby he has gained the

powers and the prerogatives of the star. And so

star

the individual

who belongs to some secret fraternal

order with mystic and cabalistic passwords builds

up an artificial sense of superiority which he can

never gain in the great world outside. Do not

mistake my meaning.
Many of these fraternal
organizations are based
social

connectedness

upon

and

a great feeling of

many

of

interested in the welfare of a vast

human

But

them

number

are

of

not necessary to belong

to a secret fraternal organization in order to be
beings.

a successful

human

it is

being.

Rather these secret

fraternal organizations are artificial devices

have been designed to help out those

which
whose

natural social instincts are not strong enough to

enable them to build up a worth-while and useful

without the paraphernalia of the

It is not necessary to be a grand high

social existence

secret order.

exalted Elk or a Rajah of the first Star in the

Independent Order of Lions. It is not necessary
to be a Rotarian or a Kiwanian in order to

experience within your breast a deep social feeling

and a deep regard and interest in the welfare of
1 1 1

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

your fellow-men. The really great social minds

have not needed these accessory devices in order
to express their social urge.

The more

successful a

human

being

is

the wider

the range of the organizations to which he belongs

or to which he contributes his ability.
The

human

average

being perhaps belongs to a small

club, or a small professional or athletic association

or political club in which he is developing a

"

sense of belonging to a larger

we ". It is this
"
we " which is
feeling of belonging to a larger
the essence in the social life.

The

first

"

we "

which we belong

to

"

is

the

"

we is the school, the third

family, the second
"
"
we is usually the business or political group.
Sooner or later a human being who is worth while
finds

himself

interests

and

associated

efforts

in

community

with some group of

of

human

beings which is interested in the development of

the human spirit or the furtherance of the cause
of social security and well-being.
individual often finds his success in
of service to

The

The mature
life

in terms

some club or group or organization.

larger the club and the larger the purpose

I

12

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
of the organization and the greater the service
of the individual, the more successful he is likely
to be.

It is said

Waterloo was

by

won

historians that the Battle of

not in Belgium, but on the

This is
playing-fields of Eton and Harrow.
probably true from the psychological point of
view. It might also be said that the success of a
cabinet or the success of a minister or the success of

judge or the success of a great physician was

made not in the law court or in the surgery, but
in the schools and clubs where these individuals
a

learned

the

and techniques of

arts

social

co-

operation.

The
socially

individual

mature,

is

service to a larger

own development

"

who

is

politically as well as

one who finds that in his

we " his own success and his
is

most logically and most

effectively developed.

So

far as the superior level is concerned with

regard to clubs and organizations, we must speak

here only of those individuals whose vision

they actually bring into being

the club or organization with which they are

so

great

that

is

"3

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
associated.

Perhaps

success in a

human

this

is

being.

the highest

When

mark of

man

recog-

nizes the need, the social need, or the religious

need, and finds a new group, a new religion, a

new

party or a new professional organization and

devotes his life to the furtherance of that cause

and co-operatively, not for the purpose

of glorifying or expanding his own ego, but for
the sake of the thing itself, then we have an
selflessly

individual

by

who

is

fellow-men

his

human

being.

marked by history
as a superior

as well as

and successful

Naturally there are not

many

such people.

much
men of

Nevertheless the world has never been so

in need of

good

good organizers,

leaders,

is
To be a
courage
to-day.
leader and an organizer, to be the founder of a
"
we " requires insight and courage. To do this

vision and

as

you do not have

with.
are a

to

it

be an empire builder to begin

Perhaps in your

group of lonely

young women who

loneliness.

You who

own community there

young men and lonely

are disorganized

by

their

read this book can be an

agent of bringing these lonely

114

human

beings

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
together into some kind of social group. Perhaps
you who read this are members of some kind of
craft or profession

the

members

which

not organized to help

of that craft or profession.
Why
is

cannot you take the initiative and form a

new

group, keeping yourself in the background and

"
we "
emphasizing always the importance of the

and minimizing the importance of your personal

"
If you want to be successful, I suggest
I ".
that

you

join,

to-day,

some group which

psychologically closely related to you.

is

Some

group that you have, perhaps for a long time,

been wishing to associate yourself with, preferably
some group whose work is important for the
betterment of mankind.
there are any

who have

If

among my

readers

not the social vision,

who have

lacked the courage to attempt the

organization of such a club or group, I hope
serve as an inspiration and as
a stimulus to the furtherance of their activities.
that this

book may

XIV
CLOSELY related

problem of politics and

the problem of clubs and organizations is the
problem of community service as the reader will
see, community service is a much broader term
and allows of a much greater leeway. Naturally
enough, as we have pointed out in the other social
problems, the child offers no community service
he accepts the love and affection, esteem, and
protection of the adult world as if they were his
birthright and does not question the Tightness of
their continuation toward him.
to the

There

are a great

many

individuals

who have

been so spoiled during their childhood that they

continue to live throughout their adult life as
if the world still owed them a living, and as if
they expected that life would be served up to
them on a silver platter. This is a typical infantile
level of
if

development.

man

or

woman

Success in

life is

impossible
continues through life with

116

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
the feeling that the world owes him a living,
and that all he has to do to marry is simply to

look pretty and do nothing. So simple a solution

of life's problems occurs only in fairy tales.
In real life it is much more difficult. Sometimes
life

may even be

most to

who

it,

but

cruel to those
it

is

contribute the

surely never kind to those

contribute nothing.

In the adolescent

we

who

life

of

community

service,

find that individuals take a certain

amount

of interest in their
interest

them

gives

in so far as

it

community

in so far as this

of protection, or
free of criticism.
A

sense

keeps them

people in the world are charitable

for no other reason than that they wish to buy
the esteem of their fellow-men. This is typically

many

great

adolescent in
is

being

its

psychology.

The

average

human

a little bit interested in seeing his friends

well off and occasionally takes an interest in the

affairs of his community.
In a world constituted
as

it

is

to-day, with so

human

many

cross currents of

successful living is impossible without a positive attitude toward the

problem of community service. Those who are

selfish

interest,

117

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
those who
wealthy must aid those who are poor
can see must aid those who are blind
those
;

who

are strong must help the

weak

those

who

employed must help to support the life of

those who are unemployed despite their desire to
work. Never before in the history of the world
has there been such a great opportunity for
For an
individuals to be of use to one another.
are

individual to be bored to-day or to say that he has

no interest in life, is a sign of infantile develop-

ment of
bored,

enough

community sense. When you are

simply means that you are not putting

his

it

into

life.

When you

in the world about you,

it

is

are not interested

an indication that

your investment has been too small to pay any

dividends.

Naturally

at the

mature

level, as in the case of

clubs, organizations, and politics, the successful

human being finds happiness in contributing
to the welfare of a community in which he

Perhaps some of my readers will say

they have no opportunity to do this. This is
"
"
to their
impressing
simply another method of

lives.

neighbours.

Some people
118

are so ambitious that

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
they cannot accomplish any act unless

it

more or

service

does not

less

heroic one.

Community

need to be a heroic

service.

is

The

superior and mature individual will occasionally

have the opportunity to serve his community in

heroic ways, but every man and woman has the

opportunity to serve the group in which he lives
in his daily life.
Let us take some examples. Thoughtless individuals are for ever littering the streets of cities

simply because both their social and aesthetic

sense are not sufficiently developed to enable

them

to recognize that their thoughtless disposal

of trash makes their city unsightly and unhealthy.
If every man and woman who reads these pages
were to appoint himself as a committee of one to

pick up trash which thoughtless individuals had

scattered about their community, the community

would be immediately beautified. If, in

addition to this, they were to teach members of

itself

or group to observe the laws of

aesthetics, the good work would be carried on.

their family

If

on occasion you

an individual thoughtlessly
of your community, do not

see

littering the streets

scold him, but pick

up the
119

trash that

he has

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

thrown
point

it

carelessly
out to the

can dispose of

on the sidewalk or street,

man and show him where he
with a greater protection of

it

aesthetic values.

Another example

In our modern

noise of useless automobile

honking

is

cities

the

a potent

factor in the disturbance of the nervous equilibrium of the inhabitants. If each driver of an

automobile will drive more carefully with his

head and less raucously with his horn, our urban
communities would be far more peaceful and
far less nerve-jangling.
himself, here again, as a

Each one can appoint

committee of one to do

this public service.

Or

another example

Many

of us

buy books

and magazines which we thoughtlessly destroy

Sometimes
after we have finished reading them.
such books and magazines are allowed to gather
All books
dirt and dust in some hidden attic.

and magazines and newspapers have a potential

social value, and there are many individuals
in

hospitals,
prisons to

or

in

far-off

settlements,

whom these books and

1

20

or

in

magazines would

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
be the breath of

go over
your library and pick out the books you no longer
want which might be useful or interesting to
someone else, make a collection and send them to
some hospital, orphanage, or prison where they
can be used

who

has not,

life.

Why

not, to-day,

There is hardly a human being

in some department or other, an

which he does not yet share with his

fellow-men because he is too thoughtless to do so.
There are sailors in ships, soldiers in far-off
outposts of the empire, poor students and underpaid workers who crave the fun of interest and
excess

amusement, who are prevented simply by poverty

or the thoughtlessness of their neighbours from
enjoying the things that exist to be enjoyed.

No

inconsiderable part of community service lies

in sharing goods, time or services with those who

know

of no feeling so satisfying
and fulfilling to the human heart as the feeling
of true gratitude and true appreciation that

need them.

comes

to

one who has shared his time or

his effort

with those who, in the ordinary course of events,

would be incapable of enjoying them.

Each human being must conduct

i

121

his

com-

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

munity

service according to his gifts and according

no human being may

If
himself and be successful.

to his opportunities, but

live entirely for

you are a doctor, you give your services in a clinic;

if
you are a barrister, you give your services to
those who have no defender before the law.
But you need not be a professional man or a
teacher, you need not be rich or powerful to serve

your community

well.

It is

enough

to take a

cripple child for a ride in a car ; it is enough to

send a friendly greeting to a sick person in a
it is
nursing home
enough occasionally to lift
;

the telephone and ring up a friend whom you have

neglected for some time. If you are not in the
habit of doing these things, you will see how

you have not been in

the habit of thinking of your neighbours, make

self-evident they are.

If

out a chart for yourself with a space for every

day in the week, and make a check mark for all
the kind and thoughtful deeds and all the forms
of service that you can possibly render to your

community.

After the

first

few weeks of checking

you will find that your

and more interesting, and

yourself in this fashion,

life will

that

become

you

will

fuller

proceed without the necessity of

122

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
"
saying To-day I must do my good deed ". After
a time such a philosophy of life pays such an
enormous dividend in human happiness that it

no longer necessary to remind yourself to serve

your community. This will come as naturally
as breathing air, as being honest, and as being a

is

human

being.

123

XV

WE now come to a very important

chapter in our

Here again, we are

quest for a successful life.
still in the social sector and I want to talk to
you
the
and
about
the
to-day
necessity
desirability
of cultivating
literature.

that

it is

an interest in the
are

the few words of their

know, and

and in

some people who believe

unnecessary to speak more than

There

utterly

arts

own

local dialect that they

so far as the arts are concerned, they

believe that the arts are

beyond them and leave

the pursuit and practice to those

"
"
talented
for them.
believe

whom

they

only necessary to go back to the dim dawn

of human history to recognize that all speech
and all expression in whatsoever form originated
It is

two tremendous human needs. One is the

need for protection the law of self-preservation
and the other is the need for love the law oi
in

race preservation.

If

we study
124

the primates and

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

mammals we find that the first sounds that

were made are sounds which are designed to
other

the help or the love of other animals.

Because human beings are so helpless and because

attract

they are so tremendously dependent upon one

another, both for protection and for love, it is no
fortuitous circumstance that speech has developed

among human

beings as always the highest and

most perfectly developed gift.
Speech is the
golden bridge between the individual and his

community and, without speech, without communication, the community could not exist and
the individual could not exist without the community. As a psychologist, I cannot impress upon
you too seriously the importance of the development of speech as a means towards successful

You have never seen a really successful

human being who knew no more than his local
dialect. You have never seen a successful human
being who was not able to communicate with
other human beings in a variety of ways in
living.

the arts, music, painting, sculpture, the dance,

poetry, the drama all are specialized forms of

The painter speaks with his pigments,

speech.
the sculptor speaks in terms of significant forms,
125

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
the dancer

speaking in the chains of rhythm,

the poet and the musician is speaking in the
is

specialized methods which they

All these activities are released.

have learned.
Show me an

who

has no interest in poetry, no

interest in the drama, no interest in the dance, and
individual

I will

show

human

being

who

is

a crass egotist,

an unsuccessful, bigoted, narrow-minded, un-

happy, introspective human vegetable. One of

"
the French kings once said
The more langu:

ages I speak, the

more times

am

man/'

Every intelligent reader must see immediately

the profound importance of developing more than
a

merely

nodding acquaintanceship with the

disciplines of art and literature. The best way to

begin is to know one's own language and to speak
it

perfectly.

successful

human being must

not

only be able to understand the writings of the

great minds of his own race, but he should be
able to express himself clearly and logically in his
mother tongue.
lack of understanding of

English, which is one of the most expressive

languages in the world, is a tremendous detriment
in the striving for success as a human being.

126

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
Perhaps you who read this have been compelled
at some time or other to
relinquish your formal
education go back now and fill in the gap that
;

exists.

Ignorance

no disgrace, but to remain

of one's own mother tongue,

is

ignorant, especially
or one's own native literature
at

hand and education

as

it is

you
your

to-day

that

is

is

as

when help

cheap and

a crime.

as

lies close

common

Not only should

learn to write your native tongue as well as

intellect permits

you, but you should also

learn to speak it. Practise reading the works of

the better authors aloud. The fine art of reading

aloud, which used to be one of the prides of

civilized and cultured people, has fallen into decay

because

than

it is

it is

so

much

good speaking voice and to

aloud to one's own friends and

to cultivate a

read the classics

relatives.

easier to listen to the radio

Perhaps you can begin by forming a

club of other interested individuals

better their mental horizons

and

who

desire to

to learn

more

about the beauties of the English language and

Meet perhaps once a week
English literature.
to read

aloud to one another from the better

magazines and from the current books. In this

way you will be moving towards successful living

127

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
in several directions at the

same time.

You

will

not only gain the benefit of the social contact

with the great mind that has written the book,

but also you will develop a social relatedness and

connectedness with those who have a common

aim with you and who are bound in a

social union by virtue of a common goal.

closer

One

of the strengths of the English people is

the closely knit character of the civilization and
culture of the British

Isles.

But

this, also, is a

potential source of great weakness. Owing to the

fact that Englishmen have been empire builders,

and

because

they

have

also

impressed

their

language on foreign people, Englishmen have

been somewhat stubborn about learning the
languages of foreigners. In days gone by when
the British Empire could stand apart, in a sense,
from other nations and maintain a semblance of
completeness and totality within

itself, it

may

not

have been so necessary for Englishmen to learn

the languages, the thoughts, and emotions of
their continental neighbours.

To-day

this has

changed. Neither England nor any other country

"
All
can alone remain
in splendid isolation.
5 '

countries and

all

languages have come closer

128

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
together, and while

true that the English

language more than any other language bids fair
to become a universal language, the really succesful
at

it

is

and intelligent Britisher is not going to stop

knowing only his own mother tongue. Suc-

cessful living

demands

at least

an acquaintance

with the languages and thoughts of one's neighbours. French and German, Italian and Spanish

languages which should offer tremendous

dividends in satisfaction to the Englishman who
are

studies them.

Even

if

you know only

few words

of foreign language and the barest rudiments of

the grammar, you are better off than if you

know nothing about them,

you know a
you the desire

for, if

foreign language, there awakens in

to visit the land in which the language
If

tongue.

"

Morgen
or a
a

The

the native
"

you can say no more than

or

"

Comment

?a va

"

Frenchman, you have gone

bond of

is

spiritual mutuality

to a

Guten

German

far to establish

with the foreigner.

implied compliment of knowing a few words

of a foreign language will favourably impress

the foreigner to whom you speak and incline him
to

be friendly and co-operative to you.

It is

my

belief that every intelligent, civilized,

129

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
and successful

human

being should

know

at least

one other language besides his native tongue,

and know it well enough to carry on an ordinary
conversation in that tongue and to be able to read

simple books, newspapers, and journals in that

Make learning a foreign lanforeign tongue.

guage a part of your plan towards successful living,
but be certain that you have first discovered the
beauties of English and have acquainted yourself
with the tremendous contributions of English
literature to the world's civilization.

Shakespeare,

Chaucer, Keats, Milton, are unfortunately often

known better outside of England than they are
within the country of their birth. We are sometimes inclined to minimize the jewels that we have
in order to exaggerate the value of the jewels
Both from a literary
that we do not possess.

and psychological point of view,

it

would be good

for every reader to re-acquaint himself with the

immortal plays of Shakespeare and the immortal

England has given the world. Many

of these things which you have read in school
and since forgotten, have new values for you now
At present
that you have grown and matured.
they often remain in a greater or lesser degree

poems

that

'3

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
unpleasantly tinged with associations of school
tasks.
Now is the time to open your eyes and

your minds, as mature individuals, to the gifts

which lie closest at hand.
A re-reading of
Shakespeare will teach you much.
also passed

when

it

The

time has

was believed that a knowledge

of music, painting, sculpturing, the dance, the

drama, and all the associated arts were the
prerogatives of the rich and the powerful. Today these arts lie open to all those who have the
intelligence to seize

most of them.

Music

upon them and make the

Let us take the case of music

perhaps the greatest republic that the

world has ever seen. Musicians and music lovers,
is

wherever they are in the farthest places of the

globe, are a communal brotherhood who worship
at the shrine of

melody.

once

recall that I

spent a Christmas high up in the Alps at a lonely

hospice. I was a foreigner in a foreign country.
All about me were people who spoke a strange
dialect that I could hardly understand.
I came

from an entirely different world and

felt

certain sense of involuntary separation from the

other sportsmen who were enjoying the winter

holiday

among

the

Alpine snow.

As

was

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
sitting

one evening in the hospice, thinking of

home thousands

of miles away, a fellow-skier

harmonica from

my

drew

knapsack and began playing

a simple melody from one of Mozart's operas.
Immediately I pricked up my ears and a light
a

his

as I mentioned the name of

eyes
the opera to the amateur musician, a gleam of
friendliness came into his eyes, and despite the

came

into

fact that

my

we had

to converse in

broken

syllables of

a foreign language, there was an immediate feeling

of friendliness and comradeship between us.

From

on we became inseparable, and

the relationship which grew up between me and
this Italian Alpinist has remained one of the most
pleasant memories of my life. It is not necessary
that point

to be able to

perform upon a musical instrument

to enjoy good music. Music which was once the
sport of the wealthy

to-day the possession of

is
willing to turn the dial

is

any poor layman who

of his radio to those stations which are broadEspecially it is true on the

Continent, where with the touch of the finger
one can turn to the music of different nations
casting fine music.

and learn from them.

language.

The

Music

traveller

132

who

is

an international

has wandered in

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
foreign lands and come suddenly upon the melody
of his own mother tongue spun by a stranger
recalls the thrill of
familiarity with which he
listens to the syllables of his native

tongue.

The

music speaks an international language which

requires no translation, and no dictionaries. That

man who would consider himself a successful

human being must know something of the history
and the

literature of music.

It is

inconceivable

human

being should not have

read the plays of Shakespeare.
Neither is it
conceivable that a successful human being should
that a successful

be completely ignorant of the contributions of

Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, or Richard Wagner.

Each country has contributed

its

particular genius

to the world literature of music, but because of

the very character of music, the international bond

that exists between the music lovers is perhaps one
of the most important factors in the production
of the brotherhood of man and of world peace.

What we have

said for languages

and for music

I can hear some of

holds equally well for art.
my readers protesting that they have not the
time to develop an interest in foreign languages,
that the business of
in music, and in the arts
;

'33

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

up too much of

their activity, and

when they have finished their day's work they
are too tired to study.
Once a patient of mine

living takes

who complained
an

he was too busy

to develop

intelligent plan of successful living

went over

that

We

the problem with me very carefully.

made a
list of his activities and we found that he wasted

from three

to four hours a

day in utterly useless

By budgeting his time he was able
pursuits.
to accomplish a great deal of study which he
thought was entirely beyond him. One of my
patients succeeded in learning the French language well enough to enable him to spend a holiday

with great pleasure to himself, by

studying French every day in the thirty minutes
that it took him to go back and forth from his
in

Normandy

home

to his office in the

Underground

fifteen

minutes each way which he had formerly spent

in staring aimlessly at the advertisements or at
the shoes of his fellow-passengers thus became

a vital point in his daily work. One of the great

educators in America, Dr. Elliot, formerly presi-

dent of Harvard University, devised a five-foot

shelf of the world's classics, which, if people
read for only fifteen minutes every evening before

'34

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
going to bed, would enable them to become
acquainted with most of the significant literature
that has ever

how you

been written.

I will leave to

you

develop the bridges which bind you

to your fellow-men.
It makes little difference
whether you study French or music, whether you
will

become acquainted with sculpture or Sanskrit,

whether you study public speaking or Spanish
you, but there is
no doubt, my reader, that you can increase your
awareness of the world in which you live and

literature, I leave the choice to

your connectedness
by developing an
literature, in

to the people who inhabit it,

interest in the arts, and in

your own tongue, and in the lan-

guages of others.

The more you

are connected,

more significant your life will be, and the

more thrilling the living of it. In your plan for
successful living, you must take into consideration

the

development of your interest and understanding

of literature and the arts.
a

135

XVI

WE now

come

to the consideration of the next of

the social spokes which we have labelled ; history

and science. Much of what we have said about

and the arts also applies directly to the

study of history and science. It is impossible for
a human being to understand the world in which
he lives unless he knows something of the history
literature

that has preceded

it.

One

of the chief differences

between man and animals is the fact that man

has a history whereas animals have only a bioNo dog benefits from the
logical continuity.
experience of his ancestors except in so far as
the experience of his ancestors has affected the
structure of his

body and

his brain.

Man, on

the other hand, has a history, and this history

enables him to profit by the mistakes and successes

of his forebears.
be, above

all

To be successful in life one

things, aware of

the world about him.

what

is

To-day we

tremendous human problems.

136

must

happening in

are faced with

Political

problems

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
such as those which are presented by Fascism,
economic probDemocracy, and Communism
;

lems such

as those that are presented

by over-

production, under-consumption, distribution, and

problems, and psychological problems which arise out of the conflicts

of human greed and human love
racial probtransportation

social

lems which derive from the fear and ignorance

of one race for the other.
It is impossible to
understand the economic plight of the presentday world without knowing that this plight is

two such completely

separate human movements as Feudalism and the

the

direct

resultant

Industrial Revolution.

of

It is

impossible to under-

stand the psychology of your unemployed neighbour without knowing something of the scientific

achievements that have given us the machines

that have directly led to his unemployment.

No

one to-day would think of using a paraffin

lamp or a tallow candle if he could use electricity,
but many people are satisfied to let history make
of their very eyes without knowing
their own activities affect the course of

itself in front

how

history.

problems

One
is

of the most fascinating of all human

the problem of the evolution of social

137

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

and
trace

political institutions

and constitutions.

back the vast movements of

and behaviour to their

interest

and

human

historic origins,

activity for that

activity

a proper

woman who
successful human

man

wants to consider himself a

is

To

being in the present-day world.

or

Many

of our

better journals and newspapers to-day conduct

columns devoted to scientific progress, and many

journals are devoted entirely to scientific subjects.

successful

human being must have

at least a

working knowledge of the ideas which motivate

scientific thought.
Very frequently scientific
ideas revolutionize civilization more than wars
or political upheavals. Copernicus revolutionized
the Middle Ages with his astronomical theory.

James Watt produced the industrial revolution

and all that has been its consequence by developing the steam engine. Albert Einstein with his
theory of Relativity has changed the philosophic

and religious conceptions of the scientific world.

Not to be aware of what is going on in the world
of science, medicine, physics, biology, and psychology is to remain an ignorant and unsuccessful

not necessary to have an expert

knowledge of scientific progress, but an intelligent
person.

It is

138

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

layman can often

find

most abstruse and

the

problems presented for him in

language which he can understand, in the better
magazines if he will only look for them. History
difficult scientific

and science are two disciplines of human thought

which must be part of the tool kit with which the
intelligent and successful human being carves out
his life for himself.

The

infantile individual, as

you may expect,

is

completely disinterested both in the history of his

race and his civilization, and the scientific achieve-

ment which

it

has developed.

The

adolescent

individual studies these under compulsion, but

does not see the importance of independent

He

remains a
activity and individual study.
slave to authority or he uses what he knows to
The average man
destroy human relations.

knows

and cares little about science and

history. The mature and successful human being
avidly reads what he can and strives to understand the movements in the world about him, and
little

the scientific strategy which pushes back the

boundaries of ignorance and defeats the forces
of death and disaster which beset humankind.

The

superior

individual,

139

of course,

uses

this

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

knowledge both of

movements and of
the greater glory of man-

historical

discovery for
kind and for the personal satisfaction in creation.
scientific

We

now

finished one of the most important quadrants in our wheel of successful living.
It will give you the plan which you must follow.

have

the other quadrants you will be able to

apply the principles which we have developed
along the lines which perhaps for reasons of the

In

all

lack of time and space I will not be able to

describe in as much detail as I have described

the important cardinal spokes which lead to the

development of social co-operation and to the

development of a deeper and more profound

connectedness between the individual and his
fellow-men.

If

strive to

you

successful

you must keep before your mind's eye

in

life,

all

the time that the

social

become

usefulness.

first

criterion of success

No human

being

can

is

be

he is a successful social human

The first law of individual success is the

successful unless

being.
law of social co-operation.

140

XVII
LET

now

the right of our diagram of

the wheel of successful living and consider the
us

shift to

general quadrant of work. As I have stated before,

the worth of a human being is measured by his

This contribu-

contribution to his fellow-men.

Many individuals
usually called work.
are unable in their work to find a complete
tion

is

personal satisfaction. For these individuals there

exists the quadrant of leisure and avocation in

which they find a

work

is

real

a necessity

pleasure.
successful

One
work

For most of us

meaning.

for

many

of us a source of

of the factors that leads to a

be found in our philosophic attitude toward work. Now, you know,

there are workers and workers. Some men work
to

life is

like galley slaves at a

them, and others sing

find satisfaction.
will

job that

at their

The

is

work because they

successful

have so constituted

distasteful to

human

his life that his

being

work

represents not only a personal development, but

141

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

an active contribution to

his

fellow-men.

people complain that they are in the

wrong job or that they have the wrong work,
but the more they complain, the more you will
great

many

the job that is wrong but the

worker. Perhaps the greatest number of people
who are having difficulty with their jobs are
realize that

individuals

it

isn't

who have never grown up

psychological attitude toward work.

to

Many

mature
people

who
a

are psychologically immature consider work

curse, a bore, a compulsive duty which is

foisted

upon them by

authority.

They

are the

who

often have been such spoiled

children that they resent the implication that they
individuals

should work.

Psychologically they have trained

themselves

their lives to be like princes

all

and

princesses surrounded by an adoring and cheering

court.
The fact that the world requires them
to work in order to make a living is obnoxious

them and all their lives they are striving to do

as little work as possible.
The child, of course,
does no work and feels that his presence in the
to

world

is

sufficient reason for his existence.

The

adolescent attitude towards work, which unfor-

tunately

is

present

in

most workers,

142

is

that

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
attitude that

men work

because they have to

and not because they like to. While it is true in

times past that workers have been exploited by
those who have had the power to exploit them,
and while

true that in times past, also, the

exploiters of human labour have been clever
enough to explain their exploitations in terms of
it is

a religious duty, making the worker feel that he

was committing a crime against God if he shirked
his job, to-day

longer so

fortunately no
and the importance of work

such exploitation

common

is

maintenance of mental sanity has become

So important has this problem
recognized.

for the

become

that in the United States and in other

which are suffering from the unemployment crisis, the Government has wisely made

countries

work

rather than allow individuals to believe that

they are being paid not to work, thus robbing

them of their sense of personal worth. The
adolescent individual

because he has

to,

still

believes that

because he

is

he works

compelled by

the boss to work, shirks his job whenever he can

and works as little as he can, and what he earns

from

his

turns into

work the adolescent worker quickly

pleasure, and his sole reason for work

H3

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

much

to be able to
enjoy himself as
can.

is

as

he

and enjoyment
are important aspects of successful living, but
I do not believe that pleasure is a goal in life nor

Now,

I believe that recreation

that the pursuit of pleasure is adequate work for

a human being in a world which requires willing

The

workers on every hand.

average

man works

in order to support his family and finds the

meaning of his work in the development of his

He contributes, but his

family life.
contribution is not especially tinged with any

home and

altruistic motives.

The mature

individual and

the superior individual find in work a double

satisfaction. These are the individuals who would

work even

they had enough money to support

themselves without work. A mature philosophy
"
of work is a philosophy which states
if

work
work
men.

My

gives me a pleasant self-satisfaction and my

contributes to the welfare of my fellow-

My

existence in the world

without the work that

can do.

is

worthless

I will

work

so

that I will get the maximum of self-satisfaction

and attain the maximum of usefulness to

my

fellow-men."

Such

philosophic

144

attitude

is

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

who would be a successful

You may ask how can a man who

simple to anyone

human being.
is

entries in a ledger or pasting

labels on tin cans have a feeling

making boring

unimportant
that his

work

is

important to the workTs welfare

any work which

is
sufficiently valuable that someone will pay you
for your services eventually has some social
value.
There are occupations which are relatively very important in the social scheme of
things and other occupations which are less
I

can answer

this

by saying

that

Sometimes circumstances prevent us

from getting into the work that we would like

important.

to do, but there

we want

nothing that prevents

is

become

us, if

from training and

studying for the next higher job that we would
like to do.
If your immediate job gives you no
to

successful,

change that job for a job

satisfaction, strive to

that will give you more satisfaction or perhaps

a greater social value even if such a new job will

pay you

less

While

money.

true that every

a valuable job, it is
it is

job that is being paid for is

not necessarily true that the amount of money
that you make from your job is a true index of its
social value.

Many

man

has worked for years

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
an invention for which he has not been paid,
and yet his social value was great. Many a man

at

has spent years teaching children the elements of

arithmetic or reading and been poorly paid,
and yet the social value of his teaching has been

Each human being must make

If you are striving for
certain compromises.
success in terms of egotistical power through the
possession of money or goods, then you will
often have to do unpleasant and socially worthless
tasks in order to make that money quickly, but
inestimable.

when you have

the money, you will probably

be faced with other problems which you will be

unable to solve and your spurious success will

come home to rankle you. A physician who saves
a life, even though he is paid an insignificant fee
for his services,

he gets

must consider the

as part of his fee.

satisfaction that

It is true that

some-

who do

the most socially useful

work are exploited in our civilization by other
individuals who are straining for neurotic goals

times individuals

of power.

research chemist

manufacturing company
ings a

week

for

employed by

a big

receive forty shillof work which his

may

piece

employers are realizing forty thousand pounds a

146

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
year from.

It

is

true that in our world there

such examples of exploitation. The

problem cannot be solved in a word. I believe
that every workman is
worthy of his hire. I
are

many

believe that those professions and activities which

deal with the education of children, the healing

of the sick, the teaching of human beings to

enjoy life more fully, should be better paid, and
that

the opportunities for

human

exploitation

through economic tyranny should be curbed,

but these goals are still far away. Those of us
who are working for such goals must be content
sometimes with the knowledge that our work
and our philosophic attitude toward our work
are in themselves deep and profound consolations.
crust of bread earned in teaching a child to

appreciate music ; a small flat rented with the

proceeds of years of painstaking research, are
often more satisfying to the individual who has

gained these simple and sometimes unprepossessing returns than the gaudy show of palaces and
yachts to those who have sought happiness and
success in the exploiting of their fellow-men.
can, get a job that gives your ego
satisfaction and contributes something to the
If

you

H7

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
world

you cannot get such a job, get a job

which will pay you a living and do that job as
well as you can and work hard to develop yourself
for a better job or a more satisfying job, and finally
spend your time at some hobby which will give
;

if

you the psychic

satisfaction that

had from your job.

you should have

XVIII

WANT now

to take

up the general headings of

craftsmanship and resourcefulness which are two
We can take them
spokes in the work sector.
I

simultaneously because they are so closely allied

to one another.
Let us begin with the infant

The

knows nothing and does

nothing. He is helpless and dependent upon the
grown-up world. There are many human beings
who, despite the fact that their jobs have reached

again.

an

adult

infant

stage,

have,

nevertheless,

remained

and who are completely helpless

in a world of grown-up problems and completely
Such
incapable of taking care of themselves.
individuals assume the childlike attitude that
someone will always take care of them, either
infants at heart

their families or their servants or their friends are

constantly being
obligations.
tasks,

called

They

upon

to

assume their

cannot perform the simplest

sometimes merely to move from one place to

another, to get a doctor, to call a carpenter, to open

149

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

on

a bottle, to sew

a button,

throw them into a

panic of helplessness. They are completely without

any resources and without any craft which will

make themselves independent

enable them to

of

other people.
These individuals remind me of
those fabulous characters which used to be

portrayed in Chinese histories,

who

prided them-

finger-nails a foot long to

demonstrate to the world that they did nothing
selves

upon having

There are many people living

the world to-day who, while they do not have

for themselves.

in

finger-nails a foot long, might just as well have

so far as their general resourcefulness is concerned.

The

human being

appreciates the
fact that other people are resourceful and that
other people master certain crafts, but is always

adolescent

willing to let these other people use their expertness to help him out of his difficulties.
The

average

human being

in the course of a lifetime

develops a certain craftsmanship in the needs of

everyday

life,

meeting new

and a certain resourcefulness in

situations.

The mature human

being, while realizing his dependence upon the

expert advice and ability of those who are trained
in certain specific branches of

human

conduct,

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
attempts to be able to do as much for himself
as he can and to be as resourceful in new and
difficult situations as

he can make himself.

Modern civilization has given each of us a

notable number of machines which help us to
accomplish our ends and which materially lighten
our tasks.
These machines also extend the
horizons of our activity, and not to be able to use
these machines sometimes remains forever limited

by the world which surrounds

us.

successful

human

being in this world should be able not

only to write with a pen, but to use a typewriter
not only to walk on his feet, but to use such
;

simple means of transportation as skates, bicycle

or an automobile.
Perhaps in twenty-five or
for the
fifty years it will be just as important

average

human

being to be able to pilot his

own

important nowadays that a

successful and well-oriented human being should
aeroplane as

it

is

be able to drive a simple automobile without

A successful human
getting into difficulties.
being should know the elements of cooking, of
sewing, of carpentry, of plumbing, and be able
to adjust the less-complicated electrical appliances
of our daily

life.

'5

XIX
LET

us

now

turn to the problem of the develop-

ment of one's
in the wheel

self-esteem, a very important spoke

of successful living.
Individuals

vary greatly in the way in which they look at

themselves and place a value upon themselves.

Some people

are actuated

by

which makes them attempt

esteem

They

at a

much lower

are as if they

the world

demand no

will

level

them

responsibilities

than

They

humility

at

it

actually is.
in the hope that

their

word and

from them.

individuals value themselves out of

to their real worth.

false

to place their self-

were worms

take

all

Other

proportion

are so conceited that

they believe that the world exists for the sole

purpose of making them happy and giving

them an opportunity for self-glorification. These

two apparently diametrically opposed points of
self-esteem, strange to say, are psychologically
equivalent.
People who believe that they are

worms and people who

believe that they are gods

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
have only an infantile level of development so
far as self-esteem

is

You

concerned.

will notice

on the wheel of life the problem of selfesteem and the problems of objectivity and the

that

sense of

humour appear

in different quadrants.

Actually, they are very closely related, and

it is

impossible to have an infantile development of

the sense of self-esteem and anything more than

an

infantile objectivity or sense of

humour.

The

had enough experiences in life to judge his worth adequately. At

best his self-esteem is derived from the love and
affection of those upon whom he is dependent.
Thus, there are some individuals who believe
that if they are in love they lose their worth, and
infantile individual has not

who

believe that only if they can be loved

will they find worth.
Those of you who are
familiar with literature will recall many instances

others

who were redeemed by

pure woman. The Flying Dutch-

of characters in fiction

the love of a

man

of Wagner's music

man,
the
and
Beauty
fairy tales,
are based on the same theme, which is

and many
Beast ",

drama was such

such as

"

a typical infantile phantasy of inferiority being

overcome by love. While I do not deny that the
-

'S3

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
love of one person for another is an important
factor in the development of self-esteem, anyone

who

believes that love alone will build

self-esteem

up one's
and immature

following a childish
philosophy of life. At any rate, such an individual
has no very secure foundation for his self-esteem.

You

is

can well imagine that you can build up your

self-esteem solely on the love of a husband or a

wife or parent or child and be completely ship-

wrecked on the shoals of life if this one individual happened by an unfortunate circumstance
to die or to be removed.
The child often has
phantasies of omnipotence, and in his games with
soldiers or dolls he is the creator of a little world,
but these ideas must be checked as one grows
older and replaced with more objective conceptions of social value.

sense of self-esteem

bases

his

is

self-esteem

apparent superiority.
their self-esteem

Typical of the adolescent

the fact that the adolescent

upon some

artificial

Thus people who

upon family pride or the

or

build

posses-

sion of wealth or lands or especially talents are

adolescent.

Unfortunately,

great
a
of
are
in
mesh
beings
caught
either an infantile or adolescent sense of self-

typically

many human

154

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

esteem, and because this sense of self-esteem is

unstable equilibrium and may so easily be broken
down by the vicissitudes of life, they are forever

danger of some kind of mental disease or breakdown. The average

m^n has given up the notion

in

of childish omnipotence as well as the notion of

completely childish dependence and knows that

to a certain extent his self-esteem

depends upon

work, upon the good opinion of his neighbours, as well as upon the good opinion of those

his

who

The mature

love him.

individual bases his

self-esteem

world in

upon the objective contribution to the

which he lives. He is neither conceited

about his accomplishments nor falsely modest

about his attainments. The mark of the mature
sense of self-esteem

is,

par

excellence ^ the

mature

assumption of responsibility for one's accomplishments. Take an example, if an individual has

a great

flair

for musical composition

and simply

prides himself upon his ability, he is at heart an

adolescent. If this individual, however, not only
prides himself

upon

shows

is

it

off,

he

his ability,

an average

but occasionally

human being. When,

however, he knows his ability and consciously

uses that ability to bring music into the world
'55

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

and to teach others both to perform and to enjoy

it, then he has reached a mature or superior level.

The development

of one's sense of self-esteem

perhaps the most important single occupation

that any human being has.
I have already
is

mentioned that

it

is

almost universal for

human

beings to feel inferior. The sense of inferiority

leads to the desire for compensation, but where
compensation does not succeed an intolerable
feeling of weakness and futility supervenes.
human being can live and really feel that

No

he is
a worm. There are two things that he can do ;
he can either try to build up an adequate excuse
and justification for his apparent weakness, or

means of enslaving
those who are apparently more powerful. When-

he can use

his

weakness

ever you see a person

as a

who

loudly protests his

ineffectuality, you may be sure that he is a hypocrite, and that what he really wants to do is to

make you help him

self.

No

weakness.

instead of

him helping him-

normal human being

No

proud of his
human being can go on in the
is

intolerable belief in his inadequacies for a very

The neurotic human being builds
long time.

up

a spurious system of excuses for his inferiority,

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
thereby remaining infantile or adolescent in the
Whereas, the
development of his self-esteem.
mature, psychologically grown-up individual
holds up his self-esteem by factual and objective
contributions to the world in which he

are

life,

you must have the courage

of your ability

In

you must not only

and what you can do, but

order to be a success in

know what you

lives.

perform to the limit

those things which you are best

suited to perform.

57

to

XX
THE same may
as

may be

said

be said for physical compensations

for education and the development

not what you come into the

world with that counts so much as what you do
of self-esteem.

It is

with what you have.

in

life,

The most

important thing

and probably the greatest source of

happiness, is to feel that you are making real

progress in compensating yourself for your weakThe mere recognition of strength is not
nesses.

enough,

it is

important to

know

that the

weak-

nesses are being compensated.

In the field of
health there are many individuals who remain
infantile because they are using their weaknesses*
physical and otherwise, to enslave those who are

more powerful.
uses his

upon

powers

his

adolescent

The

adolescent very

neighbours.
is

commonly

to impress a spurious superiority

In

other

words,

misusing his physical health to

make

other people feel inferior.

The average
attempts to hide his inferiority and to

forward his best foot so

as to

make

the

man
put

good impres-

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

The

superior individual, and the mature

individual both are striving to find happiness in
sion.

the compensation of their physical weaknesses.

These individuals, as in the other spokes that we

have discussed, have constantly in mind the

eventual social usefulness of their efforts.

can give you an example of an unsocial and

a social compensation.
Let us imagine that an
I

individual

is

born into

-the

world with ears that

hear better than his neighbours.

dividual

is

naturally

more

Such an

sensitive

than another whose ears are normal.

attitude

is

unsocial,

tivity of his ears to

he

to

in-

sounds

If his basic

will use the greater sensi-

pick up malicious gossip about

neighbours and will spread rumours, building

"
up a spurious sense of superiority by being in
"
the know
about those whom he would like to

his

reduce to a lower position. The same individual,

if gifted with a social
point of view, will use the

same

sensitivity either in the

production of music

or poetry or some form of speech for the amuseThe

ment or edification of his neighbours.
1

happiest

man

in the world

is

the

pan who

is

transforming an organic or spiritual inferiority

into a positive personality asset.

159

XXI

WE

come now

to the discussion of several problems dealing with the realm of the sexual relations
of men and women.
Certainly, no one will

gainsay that success in

life is

unthinkable without

However much we may envy our animal

love.

friends for the sureness of their technique both in

finding a mate and loving it, we must admit that

the problem of love in human beings is not as

Blind biosimple as it is among the animals.
logical

forces

lead

the

deer to the doe, but

human

beings cannot rely entirely upon these

blind forces. Many Englishmen, such as Havelock Ellis and

Norman

Haire, have explained the

necessity for developing an art of love more fully
than I can explain it in a book of this length.

So

this,

our spoke of love

concerned, I can say

the infantile individual is not interested in

far as

loving anyone
himself.

The

else,

he

is

is

only interested in loving

adolescent individual misuses what-

ever love he has in order to develop an apparent

1

60

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
superiority over his sexual partner.
man blunders through love as

The

average
blunders

he
The mature individual

through business and life.

is the one who sees in love not
only an expression
of his own personality, but also a form of communication to his mate and to the world about
him, conceives of love as an art which must be
assiduously learned and assiduously practised in
order to be perfect.
His goal in learning this
art is never an adolescent self-glorification or
infantile exhibitionism, but always the attempt
to bring a greater happiness to his love partner

through better understanding both of

ology and the psychology of love and^
superior individual, naturally,

having come through a

is

thai

jthe

physi-

The
one who

sex.

period fcimself and

having discovered for himself the laws of the art
of love becomes, in turn, a teacher of his fellow-

men and an example

difficult

in his

with the opposite sex.

161

own

private relations

XXII

WE now

approach the problem of the manwoman relationship. The infant and that grownup individual who has not progressed beyond an
infantile sexuality knows no difference between
men and women, but is interested solely in both
with regard to their usefulness to him. In other
words, the infant exploits human beings regardless of their sex.
In the adolescent stage the
tension between

men and women becomes marked

and we find a different development in young boys and girls in which members

for the first time,

of the opposite sex are looked upon as hostile

enemies. The young boy cultivates his mascu-

women exactly as in the old

fairy tales where women appeared as witches or
evil demons.
The young girl likewise prefers the
company of her own kind and looks at all boys

linity

and deprecates

with suspicion.

This

attitude, unfortunately,

is

parents who intensify

the differences which their children find in the

fostered

by

a great

many

162

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
opposite sex

by reading them

kinds of

all

silly

and stupid lectures about the perfidy of women or

the dangerousness of men.
Many individuals
remain throughout life in this adolescent attitude,
constantly afraid of the opposite sex and constantly imputing all manner of horrible dangers
to contact

with them.

Most of the

schools which

educate the sexes separately are based upon the

essential adolescent attitude that contact with the
opposite sex

average
at least

is

dangerous and undesirable.

The

man

breaks through this adolescent idea,

in so far as his own wife and the members

own

family are concerned, but he is often

inclined to believe that members of the opposite
of his

sex outside his family belong to the race of barbarians and are therefore dangerous. The same

women who may

be friendly enough
with their fathers and brothers, but who feel that
is

true of

men

outside the family are not worthy of trust

or love. The moment that we get to the mature

psychological level, the problem of the tension

between men and women ceases to exist. At the
infantile level the child of either sex

the parent of the opposite sex.

level the individual of one sex

163

depends upon
At the adolescent
is

in competition

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
with the individual of the opposite sex.

At the

average level dependence, competition and cooperation are less, but at the mature level, we find

companionship between men and women

and co-operation becomes the rule instead of
a true

competition. All the man-made artificial differences between the sexes are minimized at the

mature

level

and

all

the similarities are stressed.

Those adolescent individuals who cannot work

woman, if they are men, or for a man, if they

are women, without entering into sexual tension
have never reached the mature level. At the
for a

mature psychological level, as regards the problem of men and women, the two sexes are
equivalent. They divide their labour and their
work, they share their responsibilities and their
pleasures, and they exist mutually to comple-

ment one another.

At the superior level, which

very few people are able to reach, and which is
the goal of success for which all human beings
should

strive,

the co-operation and complementa-

becomes finally welded into

a
we relationship in which the elements of
male and female obtain their value and derive
"
it from the whole of the
we " relationship
tion of the mature

"

life

"

164

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
rather than from the sex of the individual himself.
I

mean by

this, that at

the superior level, the

differences of the sexes are admitted

constellated so as to

mentation in the
"
"

we

"

but are

form a complete comple-

we "

relationship. It is these
relationships that show the high-water

mark of human

Happy, indeed,
co-operation.
the marriage in which neither
"
"
husband nor wife speak of themselves as
I
"
"
"
and successful
and

you

is

but as

we."

165

XXIII

THE

relationship to parents, brothers, and sisters,

and to one's own children, is of great importance.
The infantile individual wishes to remain a child

and wishes to compel his own family to take care

of him. His horizon is bounded by his mother,
brother, and family. The adolescent individual
usually finds that his relations with his family
are strained and that he is at war with them. He is
just as unobjective as the infantile individual in
that he has strong favouritism and strong resist-

ances to his family.

He

spends his

life

in an

attempt either to prove that his family is wrong or

to win their favour.
Many a human being has
wasted his entire

make
agree with him
trying to

The

average

in the hopeless process of

a parent, a brother, or a sister
life

in his

own

valuation of himself.

human being grows away from

his

family at some time, and attempts to form a

He may or may not be
family of his own.

completely clear about his motives, and usually

166

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

some of the family neuroses

that

marked

his

childhood remain to distract him in the develop-

ment of

his

mature

find individuals

objective
bilities

light.

who

look

They

level

we

at their families in

an

At the mature

life.

accept

their

responsi-

toward their parents, brothers, and

but they do not destroy their

own

sisters,

individualities

for the sake of adjustment to the ideas of their

parents. Their first focus of life is in their own

mate and in

their

own

children.

These

indi-

viduals recognize that the family exists for but

one reason, and that is to prepare the young for
a life outside of the family.
To this end they
become independent of their own families as

quickly as possible and foster the individuality

of their own children in time. They have enough
interests in life so that they

do not focus

their

entire sense of validity upon the love either of

their parents or of their children.

At the mature

level

we

find individuals

who

are

strong enough inside themselves to admit to their

children the right of the children to determine

own life. At the adolescent level men and

women who have not fully grown up psychologically, but who are physically grown up
their

167

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
have children, and do have children,
attempt to make these children conform to their

enough

own

to

ideals.

They

make

try to

the child succeed

where they themselves have failed. They are

vain and ambitious for the success of their
children, not because they are interested in the
children themselves, but because they feel that

they have
failure

made

and want to save the

a failure

by seeing

their

children develop to a

Many

unadjusted, unsuccessful,
human beings look at their children as no more
than convenient tools to build up their own self-

higher degree.

esteem and feed their

own

ambitions.

Needless

not a mature attitude toward one's

to say this

is

children.

At the mature

level the parent recog-

nizes his responsibility toward the child, and at

the same time has so many other props to his

self-esteem that he

not dependent upon the

children for a feeling of success in his own
is

private ambitions. In other words, at the mature

level the individual is free of his family, both of

members of it who are his contemporaries

and of those who belong to the younger generation, but is attached to them by the bonds of

those

mutual

interest

and co-operation, rather than by

168

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
the pathological bonds of psychological fixation.
I mean by this, that the mature individual can

with his family and live without it. The

absence of a member of his family may cause
him a momentary unhappiness, but it does not
live

lead to pathological worry or concern.

At the
mature level an individual does not depend for
his life's happiness upon the approval or presence
of a single member of his family. Perhaps in our
civilization this

to understand.

is

one of the most

It is

difficult points

becoming more and more

common

for families to live in a closely knit

circle and for the members of the family to find

value in each other's eyes, rather than in the eyes

Such an attitude of family inof the world.
breeding, whether biological or psychological,

bad both for the family and for the individual,

and no human being who is striving for success
in life can afford to allow himself to be too deeply
is

attached to

members

of his family or too deeply

concerned with their goings and comings. It is

very common, too, in this age that one member of
a family, perhaps the black sheep, desires to go
off in a direction which does not meet with the

approval of the other members of the family

169

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

members then proceed

these other

to

form an

expedition for the salvation of the black sheep's

This

soul.

an unhappy and unhealthy

is

Treat the members of your family

as

activity.

you would

your friends. Do not interfere with their

activities whether good or bad unless they come

treat

to

you

for

and unless they seek your

your brother decides to become a

in the navy when you want him to become

advice.
sailor

help,

If

a barrister or a doctor, give

him your

advice,

but do not persecute him with it.

Perhaps he
will be happier as a sailor than he would be in a
court of law or in a surgery.

If

your

sister

decides

marry someone whom you believe is below the

family level, I have no objection to your telling
to

her

how

the end I

you, but in
hope you will allow her to go her own
the

situation

seems to

While I believe that we are all

in peace.
the keepers of our brothers, I think that a broad

way

interpretation of the rule of social responsibility

includes that form of conduct which allows an

individual the right to destroy his life as well as

to make it happy.
In most of the cases in which

members of families interfere with the activities of

other members of families the avowed intentions
170

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

which are noble and good are really not the

real motives which underlie their conduct.
Most
of the time the
activities
arises

desire

of another

from

to

interfere

member

with the

of your

family

a frustrated sense of inferiority,

and

no matter how noble your motives may apparently be, either if you interfere or try to reform
or try to modify the conduct of the member of
your family to suit your needs and your ideas,
you are doing so because your own vanity or your
own ambition is at stake and not because you are
really interested in helping that other

the family.

The

member

of

concept of the family, at the

extended to the whole of the

superior level, is
community or at least to the nation or the race,

and the individual helps to contribute and sighs

over the destinies of his group or his country
with the same unfaltering devotion that the
ordinary individual, motivated purely by instinct,

shows toward

his

own

children.

171

XXIV
IN this chapter I

am

going to consider the spoke

which we call vital philosophy. Human beings

are, no doubt, endowed with brains and with the
ability to watch and interpret their own acts.

Human

beings are the only animals that plan

That

their lives.

plan their

lives.

to say, some human beings

The vast majority of human

is

beings simply muddle through, pushed by the

inestimable forces of nature and attracted to the

The

immediate goals before them.

the infantile

human

the pure vegetable.

reason for living.

child

and

being has the philosophy of

He lives and
He does not

that

his only
seek to better
is

contribute to others, to fulfil his

destiny, which is the philosophy of the vegetable,

himself,

to

and he

is

without a

can be.

human

turnip.

He is

as close to

being

philosophy of life as a human being

That is, he chooses for his vital philovital

sophy the same philosophy that a turnip might

172

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
have, which

is

and

childhood and before he gets into

simply to fulfil his biological

destiny and no more.
After an individual comes through the storm
stress of

the calm and peace of maturity, he reaches the

stage of adolescence, and the typically adolescent
is

philosophy

that

which we

call

Hedonism.

the philosophy of those who live in

order to enjoy life. Pleasure is their goal and they

Hedonism

is

translate all their activities into pleasure.

They
work simply so that they will be free to enjoy.
Work itself has no meaning for them. Basically,

Hedonism

is

a philosophy of discouragement

and

pessimism. The Hedonist madly seizes upon the

pleasure of each day because he does not believe
enough in himself to appreciate the existence of
a greater or

more mature pleasure

later on.

Another typically adolescent philosophy of

life is
Cynicism, which is a philosophy which
states that nothing is worth while, and that,
therefore, there is no use making any efforts about

Anyone with

a scintilla of psychological insight will realize that an individual who

anything.

either bored with life or cynical about life or

who pursues pleasure as the only goal in life, is

is

173

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
an individual
in

life

who

life is

making no great investment

not worth while to him because he
is

not doing anything to make it worth while.

He is not living up to his creative ability to fashion

is

the world according to his idea, and he is not

courageous enough to tackle the problems of
existence as they really are, therefore, his philosophy is cynical. He cannot find a meaning

or a value in

life

because he cannot find any

meaning and value in his own valueless life.

Another adolescent philosophy of life might
be called Romanticism.

The

romanticist

is

also

discouraged because he cannot find any value in

life

as

it

philosophy

and, therefore, his whole

the pursuit of dreams which he

really
is

is,

always believes are more desirable and more

beautiful than realities.
Such a philosophy also
bespeaks a basic discouragement.
At the average level a man has attained a
certain feeling of self-esteem which enables
to put both work and pleasure, pessimism

optimism in their proper

places.

The

him
and

average

man

has his ideals, but also a certain appreciation

of the realities of life.
At the mature level we
find a basic philosophy of pessimistic-optimism or

174

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
I mean
optimistic-pessimism.
by this, that the
mature individual realizes that nothing in life is
perfect and that, despite the best efforts of any

which he cannot control

are likely at any time to interfere with the accomplishments of his goals and ideals. The mature
individual has a certain amount of idealism and
courageously and optimistically attempts to trans-

individual, certain forces

late his ideals into actual living,

in

but

if

he

fails

attainment of his ideals, he does not

the

immediately sink into hopeless pessimism and

throw up the sponge. Boundless optimism, which
is

known

in

America

that everything

is

all

will turn out all right

based

as the

Pollyanna attitude,

right and that everything

is

an infantile philosophy

upon ignorance of the

realities

of

life.

Boundless pessimism likewise is an infantile philosophy, based upon the hopeless situation of the

A mixture of
unadjusted and impotent child.
optimism dipped with pessimism or pessimism
coloured with optimism is probably the best
philosophy of life and represents a mature evaluation not only of the individual's ability to change
the world in which he lives more or
patterns

less into

the

which he has designed for himself.

175

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

Such an attitude makes for a superior philosophy

of life and therefore for a superior life. From a
psychological point of view, the best philosophy
of life is a philosophy in which the individual
recognizes the problems that confront him, is
aware of his own abilities and has the courage to
face these problems and proceed towards the goal
of being a complete human being within the
limits of his

philosophy

own
is

character and personality. This

an admixture of optimism, of

courage, of objectivity and of social co-operation.

Anyone who proceeds through life supported

upon these four pillars is likely to attain an
adequate happiness and a just reward for his
efforts.

176

XXV
THE

next spoke to be discussed is the relation of

the individual to nature and to animals. At the
infantile

bound

level

we

find individuals

who

are so

they have no
appreciation either of nature or of other animals
than themselves.
Naturally we do not expect

up

in

themselves

that

the newly born infant to admire the wonders of a

sunset or the beauties of a glen, we cannot expect

the child to watch an animal and admire

agility or grace or beauty.

When

its

an individual

gets out of the completely narcissistic level of

early infancy and approaches the adolescent level

of

life,

we

find that the attitude toward nature

and animals is a mixed one. That is to say, it

has a double aspect. There are some adolescent
individuals who flee from the world and lose
themselves in the contemplation of nature or in
the love of animals
there are others who express
;

a definite hate toward animals

177

and

nise

the poor

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
animals as a means of building up their own
esteem.
Thus, you, no doubt, have seen

who have whipped

cats because

they

self-

men

horses or tortured dogs and

felt so

weak

in relation to their

fellow-men that they could only develop a sense

of superiority when they tortured sadistically
animals weaker and less intelligent than them-

The average man, unfortunately, has

very much time to express his love of nature

selves.

not

At the mature

or of animals.
ally,

which

success in

is

life

the individual

the

must

level

own work,

who
we find

those

strive to attain,

seek
that

not only interested in the im-

is

own body,
own love, but

mediate world of his

his

that

level psychologic-

his

his interest to the

his

own

that

family,

he extends

world about him and to the

other organisms which inhabit that world. The

mature individual recognizes the fact that he
doesn't stand alone in the cosmos, and that he is
not the centre of the world. He seeks to learn

and

and

to understand not only the

of rocks and tides and stars, but

to appreciate

inorganic world
also the organic world of trees and flowers, of
animals and birds and fishes which surround him

and are striving within him to attain a place in

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

The mature

the sun.

individual does not see an

ant crawling over the table without

feeling an
interest in the
physiology and behaviour of that
ant.

He

approaches the ant

hill

and wonders

how

the social organization of the ant differs

from the social organization of human beings,
and whether one is superior to the other. In the

spoke of nature, either as it appears directly to

his eye or as he
experiences it through pictures or
poets, the mature and superior individual feels
a certain surrender of his

the cosmos about him.

ego to the vast forces of

requires a courageous
man, strong in his understanding of himself and
secure in the knowledge that his
place is worth
It

while in the world, to be able to surrender himself

completely to the environment of the stars and
clouds, and

sunshine and rain, the earth, the

forest, and the sea which make up the world in

which he

lives.

religious in this
is

There

something that is deeply

surrender, and only a person who

able to renew his

and

is

own

the well-springs
fountains of cosmic energy can consider
life at

himself a successful and

happy man.
That man who cannot leave his counting-house,
his office desk, his store or
factory

179

and

feel at

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
or forest, on land or at
has not lived up to the height of his

one with nature in

sea, that

man

field

man

has not yet fully grown from

the limited outlook of the animal to the humanity

manhood,

that

of being a man.

80

XXVI
OUR

attitudes towards failure

humour

are

two spokes which you

between the cardinal spokes of

tivity.

and our sense of

Now the

sense of

will

find

leisure

and objec-

humour and

the ability

your failures without breaking down

under them, are really almost synonymous. This

to

take

surprise you because you may believe that

the sense of humour means the ability to laugh

may

this is the sense of the

good story or joke
humorous, but not sense of humour. The sense
of humour is really nothing more than a sense of
at a

Now

perspective.
he is a god, as

who
and

many

who

feels that

children do, an individual

believes that he can wish things to be so

they will be so, has no sense of
presto
!

humour, and

The

cannot understand or accept

adolescent is too imbued with

hopeless

pessimism or his hysterical

his failures.

his

an individual

own

Hedonism

to

also

judge either

in a proper light.

his failures or himself

Either he

181

is

worshipping

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
heroes or he

is

running away from

lest his artificial

responsibilities

sense of self-esteem be blasted.

average man has a little sense of humour.

does not expect too much of himself, and when

The

He
he

fails

he

willing to assume at least part of the

for his failure and also willing to shift
is

blame
some of the blame to destiny or the malice of
men. He has very little idea of the mature attitude to failure and the development of a sense of
humour.
The mature and superior human
beings are those who attempt to conquer every
obstacle within their power and even some which
If they succeed they
assume the responsibility for their success and
enjoy a greater self-satisfaction as a result of their
If they fail they analyse
well-planned efforts.

are

beyond

their power.

their failures

and attempt

better next time.

to solve the

They do

not, at

problem

any

rate,

proceed to disintegrate into the pessimistic attitude

of thinking that since they have failed in the quest
they have set for themselves, the entire world is
not worth while. To have a sense of humour

means to recognize your insignificance within

the scheme of the cosmos and at the same time
to

have the courage to build up your

182

own

life

as

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
beautifully and as successfully as you can, limited
as you are by being a human being.
The

difference between the

mature individual and

the adolescent or the infantile individual

is

that

whereas the infantile and adolescent individual

is

unconsciously aware of his inferiority, and,

therefore, seeks to save his face

by doing nothing

by appearing powerful, the mature and superior

individual is conscious of his relative inferiority

or

and consciously goes about compensating for it

in such a way as to make himself and those who
surround him

as

happy

as possible.

XXVII
LET

now

consider the quadrant of leisure and

discuss the three spokes of amusement and the
us

and creative avocations.

passive

Contrary to

popular conception the infant does not look at

the world as one vast joke
it is more
probable
that he sees it as a great tragedy. He has no time
;

amuse himself because he

hard at
work attempting to establish his security and
knowledge of the world in which he lives. There
really to

are a great

many grown-up

is

so

individuals

who

pass

very important citizens, but who, nevertheless,

are infants in so far as they have not learned how
to play.
At the adolescent level, in contrast, we
find that the child, having grown up to an
as

appreciation of the difficulties of life and of the

necessity of work, seeks to avoid these important
realities

and turn the whole of

playground.

who

also

work only

know

world into a

estimable citizens

and whose whole

devoted to the quest of amusement ; they

really

life is

You

his

to play

184

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

and immature.
The average man works and attempts to amuse
himself when he is not working. He recognizes
are

psychologically

the fact that

Jill

all

adolescent

work and no play make Jack and

dull boys and dull girls.

His amusements are

usually of the passive variety and he seeks to

escape in his amusements from the sordid realities

of daily

This

life.

is

not in

itself a

psychological

sin. The
ability to play, the ability to escape from
the world of reality into a world of fantasy and

one of the things that make human

beings human. In this way play, which is irrational and illogical, is just as important as religion
make-believe

which,

is

also, derives its greatest

power from

its

irrationality.

In the mature and in the superior individual,

the ability to play is highly developed.
relationship of tension and the relaxation of

The
work

and play, of study and amusement, of waking

and sleeping is an important part of the rhythm
of living. It is impossible to do one or the other
to

the

entire

exclusion of the other.

If

we

attempt to remain awake beyond the natural

limits of waking, nature makes us fall asleep
N
;

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
if

we attempt

to

work beyond the

natural limits

of work, nature sometimes knocks us out in the

form of a physical or nervous breakdown
if we
;

attempt to play without working, nature warns

us by making us bored that we are on the wrong
track
if we
attempt to sleep longer than we
;

should sleep, nature warns us by making our

It is important for
sleep uneasy.
every human
being to establish a successful rhythm of tension

and relaxation, of work and amusement. Just

as that individual whose work is most elastic and
most versatile is happier than the individual whose

work

commonplace and single-tracked, so

the individual who can amuse himself in the
is

number

of ways is likely to be happier

than the individual who has but one form of
greatest

amusement.

As you have, no doubt, recognized

cussion of

all

in the dis-

these spokes of the wheel, the idea

of versatility or multiplicity or many-sidedness

runs through my entire philosophy of successful

This idea is not original to me, but is to

be found in the philosophers, from our ancestors
living.

to the

most modern times, and

186

it is

most beauti-

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
"

Do

not put
all
your eggs in one basket." Just as a man should
have more than one job that he could do if he
fully expressed in that old

had

to, so a

man

adage

should have more than one

way

of playing, and the really successful human being

will be able to amuse himself when he is alone

and when he is in company, when he is well and

when he is sick when he is on land and when
;

he

is

at sea.

must be apparent to the intelligent reader

that he should develop the use of this leisure
time in both active and passive avocations, and
that these active and passive avocations should
It

only supplement his workaday life, but

should lead him into other spheres of activity
with which his workaday life gives him no contact.
not

In order to be successful in both the passive and

active avocations and hobbies, they should be

extended over

as large

as I believe that

it is

an area

as possible.

desirable for a

man

to

Just

do one

thing well, but to have other accessory jobs that

he could do if he had sometime to change his
vocation, so I think

it is

desirable for an individual

have one major hobby and an accessory hobby

The ideal successful
to fill in his time with.

to

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

human

being

work

his

is,

of course, the individual whose

hobby the individual who finds not

only amusement but recreation and creation in
his work and who has a number of other activities
in

is

which he enjoys

him.

his relation to the

Not everyone has

world about

either the time or the

means

to constellate their life so that they can

But everyone wastes a
adopt this suggestion.

great deal of time, and if he had a plan for using

his hobbies to fill in that time, he would be

and astonished to learn how much

progress he could make in his hobbies in the time
which he had previously wasted completely.

surprised

To

organize one's hobby-life successfully, one

should have hobbies which are primarily social,

such as sports, games, clubs, and the like, as well

as hobbies which are
primarily individual, such
as reading, artistic efforts, collections, research,

Especially interesting and

often valuable hobbies can be made from the

handicraft, or studies.

collection of

programmes and notes from

plays, performances,

and the

like.

concerts,

An interesting

hobby can be made of newspaper clippings on

some special subject that you are interested in,
such as the growth of a certain political party
188

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
or the record of a definite regiment in the war,
or progress in a certain science, or the progress of

some individual

whom you

There

admire.

are,

of course, definite collections which one could

make which prove interesting hobbies ; stamps,
china,

etchings, poems, programmes,

Naturalistic collections of various

pictures,

and the

like.

kinds are often not only valuable to the collector

but also to museums. A doctor friend of mine

made

a collection of walking-sticks of unusual

interest from all over the world.
It not only

brought him into contact with interesting people

and with interesting correspondence, but eventually resulted in his selling the collection to

important
to

tide

museum

him over

for a

an

sum which was enough

critical

illness

during his

Books are of a special interest

declining years.
because their value increases with time, and
because a library is not only a solitary pleasure but
gives the collector the
opportunity of holding congress with the great
Collections of books, of
minds of all times.

also a social pleasure, as

course,

may be

it

general or they

may be

specific

about some subject in which you are especially

interested.

An

individual

who

is

making

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
collection of special books has always an interest
wherever he travels and with whomever he

speaks.

Then

there are hobbies which deal not so

with the collections of nature

collection of knowledge
is

much

but with the

and understanding.

This

anyone who has an

should say an open mind was

a vast field of interest to

open mind, and I

one of the indispensable pre-requisites of successful

The world is moving forward so fast today that anyone who is willing to put his mind
living.

can find interesting subjects as hobbies. A

friend of mine who is an art critic has made a

to

it

study, for example, of the change in automobile

design from the first clumsy imitations of the
carriage to the modern, bullet-like, streamline
He has
designs which are coming into vogue.

gathered pictures and representations of the automobile from the earliest times, and his collection

forms an interesting commentary on the evolution

of human taste and ingenuity.

Another subject which is exceedingly interesting and which requires no particular equipment,
but which offers rich rewards, is the study of
astronomy. You need but go out into the street
190

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
or into the park and watch the changing heavens
in each season of the year to become interested in
this fascinating science.
Naturally the specific
sciences offer endless
to understand

To anyone who

microscope, the studies of biology and

buy

it.

to study and
could afford to

encouragement

botany and embryology will prove to be fascinating adventures into an unseen world. But it is not
necessary to have expensive equipment to enjoy
these studies. Textbooks are cheap, libraries are
usually free, and you will find that the moment
you are interested in the scientific study, those who
are experts in them will do all in their power to

make your

If you live in
studies interesting.
of the large cities which are equipped with

any
museums, you

museums

will find that the staffs of these

will place every facility at

in order to assist

Certain subjects

field.

your disposal

some specific
which exist all round us

your study in

and which have always existed, make interesting

studies.

dress

and

we can

the history of
costume design through the ages ;

Among

these

handwriting which

is

list

a fascinating and stimulating

and similar subjects offer

study ; psychology
rich rewards to those who will invest the
191

minimum

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
of interest and courage that
started in them.

Then, there

are

those

is

required to get

hobbies which deal

primarily with physical skill and bodily activities.

I refer to Wt world of sports.
Whether you play
cricket or football,

whether you

like to fish or

hunt, whether you prefer golf or ping-pong, or

whether you simply make a hobby of walking,

makes very little difference. It is desirable to

temper purely intellectual studies, such as astronomy with some kind of physical activity,
such as golf.
Here let me issue one word of
There are certain games which are
warning.
excellent pastimes, but which have an unfortunate
way of intruding into one's life and becoming too
important in it. The two games to which I refer
most particularly are card playing and chess
Now card games and chess are in
playing.
themselves excellent hobbies and excellent amusements. They offer specific problems and they
give the individual an opportunity to co-operate
with his fellow-men, but it is unfortunately true
that especially bridge players and chess players
take their games too seriously.
The moment
that a game becomes a substitute for life itself,

192

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
that

game

There

ceases to fulfil

are people

its

valuable function.

who

play chess or bridge as if

these games were more important than life itself.
Chess players on the whole are less likely to err
in this respect than bridge players ; chess players,
moreover, are not nearly so likely to quarrel

about their games as bridge players.

Games,
whatever they are, and however they are played,
are only valuable in so far as we consider
games, that is as adjuncts of life and not life

them
itself.

In the moment that a game becomes so important

that the losing or winning it becomes a basic
point in the maintenance of self-esteem, that

game

is

vicious and

is

to

be considered as

of mental disease or neurosis.

great

many

tempers,

estimable

torture

their

form

have seen a
lose

their

browbeat

their

individuals

wives,

neighbours, and spoil their digestions over an

unimportant game of bridge which none of
the participants could possibly remember after

twenty-four hours.

It

is

a mistake to believe

that proficiency in games is equivalent to proficiency in life. I believe that it is an adjunct of

be able to play some game fairly

the moment one gains too great

civilized life to

well,

but

'93

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
proficiency, one loses one's amateur standing, so to

Of
speak, and the game becomes professional.
course, there are some individuals who wish to
make teaching

their profession.

game

these individuals I have

right to
proficiency in a

every

earn

no quarrel.

their

game, and

if

living

With

They have
from

their

they can teach this

to others then they are valuable citizens in

the world.
But I have in mind chiefly those
individuals who are not professionals in the

game

games which they

play,

almost professional virtuosity

game
In

as seriously as

connection

this

who assume an
and who take the

but

they ought to take

I

life.

wish to utter another word

There are individuals for whom life

game and who are always playing at

of warning.
itself is a

things.

They

are the versatile masters of several

they leap from one to another

In
like a chamois leaping from crag to crag.

hobbies

and

this leaping

from hobby

to

hobby they betray the

that they are really not interested in life

itself or in effectual work, but that they are trying as hard as possible to run away from the

fact

realities

of existence.

Too many
194

hobbies and

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
too

many

avocations are almost as bad as

none

at

and especially the avocations which distract

from the business of effectual living, and which
prevent an individual from meeting his human
all

responsibilities, are not

hobbies and avocations

at

but symptoms of deep-lying discouragement

and inferiority complexes.
all

There

is

in every

which we

human being

a certain

god-

the creative instinct, and

this instinct expresses itself in a variety of ways.
Surely one of the most important things in the
likeness

call

problem of successful living is the problem of

giving this expressive and creative instinct an

open path of development.

To this end, from the beginning of time, men
and women have been interested in the arts.

The
raw

essence of every art is the translation of the

material of that art into meaningful design.

In music we take the sounds which are

all

about

make them into melody and harmony. In

painting we take the themes of nature and life
and re-create them so that others can see them
In sculpture, which is a threeas we see them.
dimensional painting, we give plastic form to
us and

'95

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
In the dance we chain our emotions

our ideas.

rhythmic muscular expression. In writing

we translate our experience into a communication
into a

to

Whatever the

reader.

whether

art

you choose,

be a handicraft, such as needlework

or carving, or an art, such as singing or sculpture
or dance, this art represents an almost religious
surrender of the ego to a purpose which lies
this

outside the ego. This is the essence of art and

the basis of its importance. Any individual who
neglects to develop his artistic side is a traitor to
the godlike spark within himself, and cannot be
a successful
successfully

who

human
is

an

being.

To

art in itself,

be sure, living
and those of my

be carrying out all the suggestions that I have made in this book, will receive

readers

the same

will

artistic

satisfaction

from

their

work

that a painter or a musician will derive from

his specific craft, but the practice of some
specific art is an important element in the art of
living.

To

be an

artist in

a double pleasure.

the creative sense gives you

In the first place there is the

pleasure which is derived from the changing of

raw material into a finished design. Progress

196

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

any art, no matter how simple or how complex

it
might be, gives one a vital satisfaction. And
that is an essential ingredient in successful
living.
in

The

second satisfaction that

is

derived from an

the purely social satisfaction that one is

both communicating a message to one's neigh-

art

is

The

bours and bringing them joy.

philosophy of the
essential

essential

from the
philosophy of the business man. The
artist

is

different

man approaches all problems with the

"
What can I get out of it ? What will
question,
"
The artist, on the other hand,
my profit be ?
business

is

more

interested in the investment than in the

His

dividends.

When

itself.

his question

into

"

it ?

even
living

if

How much

and the

he

from

lies

the

in

he approaches an
"

is

profit

profit

investment

artistic

project

of myself can I put

motive

a professional artist
his art.
This may

is

is

secondary,

and earns a
seem incom-

prehensible to a great many people who are so

used to approaching life with the profit motive

uppermost in their minds that they never consider

how much

joy there

approach.
I can hear a great

is

in

trying the artistic

many of my
197

readers obiectin^

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
to

arts

I
I

suggestion that they practise one of the

"
with the statement
Yes, Dr. Wolfe,

my

would like to be an artist, but I have no talent/*

have heard this objection so many times that I

already

know

a person
artistic

fallacies

all

the answers to

The

it.

idea that

must be talented in an art as a premise of

effort is one of the most bewhiskered
and superstitions that I have ever come

into contact with.

Most people

satisfy

them-

selves with the statement that they have no talent

for art and therefore make no effort to discover

whether they have talent or not. Imagine, for

example, that a child would say he has no talent
for walking or he has no talent for riding a bicycle
or he has no talent for swimming. Starting with
such a premise and acting as
true, the child

if

the premise were

would make no

effort to learn,

and in the end could point

to his ineptness as a
confirmation of his theory of his own inability.
Never having tried to walk or ride a bicycle or

swim, he could say after ten or fifteen years that

he had no talent for swimming or bicycling or
walking.

It is easy to see

the absurdity of such

an attitude.

Those who study very young children

198

are often

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

by the tremendous

astonished

artistic talent

which

they show. All children who are not downright

feeble-minded are artistic. They make up stories

which foolish parents often call lies

they draw
and make attempts to mould images out of clay or
mud and these early artistic strivings are the first
The reason that so few
signs of artistic talent.
;

children go beyond the primitive artistic urge is

not that they are not talented, but that their
elders succeed in infecting the child with their,

the parents, own discouragement and cowardice.

I have seen this process so often, and have so
often with my own patients and pupils been able

evoke really fine talents that

know what I am talking about.
to

can claim to

Even though

you have been deeply discouraged in life, and

even though you have always hidden behind the
idea that you have no talent for artistic expression,
believe me that artistic talent lies dormant in you
and

can be

it

and

developed
required
to

make

encouraged

made

to

flower.

What

All

and

that

is

the courage to begin and the courage

mistakes. Many of those whom I have
is

led to a successful life have

"

and fostered

is

the use of

my

begun by saying

studying the piano

199

when

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
there are already so many great pianists in the
"
"
world ?
or they have said :
should I try
to do sculpture ? there are already so many great

Why

sculptors

in

the

world."

The

of their

trick

"

discouragement lies in the little word

great ".
In order to get the enjoyment from artistic
urge and artistic expression, it is by no means

One does not have to

necessary to be great.
be a Paderewski or a Schnabel in order to get a
great deal of fun from sitting down at a piano and
being able to pick out a melody or to accompany
a simple song. It is not necessary to be an Epstein
or a Rodin in order to get a great deal of pleasure
from forming a little image in clay of your dog,
or a simple portrait of your cook's child.
not necessary to be a Gainsborough or a

It is

Van

or a Holbein to get a great deal of pleasure

out of painting a bouquet from your garden or a

Dyck

from your table. The essence of artistic

enjoyment is not derived so much from the

still life

world's opinion of the greatness of a painting as

from the investment that you make in it. Most

who do

not

plex which expresses

itself

individuals

attempt any artistic

expression are dominated by an inferiority com-

200

in the fear of criticism,

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
the fear of failure

than

they want to be great rather

artists.

that

hope

stimulate

some

these paragraphs are going to

of
readers to go to art schools*

my

or to put into practice some of their lifelong

ambitions for artistic expression. There is only

one thing to remember

art

is

long

results in

the beginning are often not satisfactory, but

with each failure you go forward and learn anew.

Each

failure

is

as

important as each success.

You need

not try to exhibit your first efforts.

Keep those just as guide-posts along your way.
Eventually you will be astonished yourself by

the progress that you make, even without teaching

in the particular art that you have chosen.

The beauty

of

all artistic efforts

and the great

advantage of an art as a hobby lies in the fact

that once you have begun with any art you are
never finished, and so long as you live you will

have the opportunity to practise it and to enjoy

In
the investment that you are making in it.
other hobbies there
collect

all

the

is

often a limit.

butterflies

201

that

exist

If

in

you
your

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
neighbourhood, your hobby is at an end, but no
one can ever paint all the pictures or write all the
or compose

stories

The

entire

That
all

of

is

cosmos

is

all

the music in his head.

the limit of artistic creation.

one of the reasons

you

to take

why

up some

of your plan for successful

I so strongly

artistic

hobby

urge

as part

life.

There is a great deal of joy to be derived

and a great sense of success, too, from the mastery
of certain simple techniques in the crafts of

life.

In a sense, these crafts and techniques are also of

an artistic order, and to those individuals who are
inclined to be manually developed, who like to
"
monkey with things ", these crafts offer a great
deal of satisfaction. For example, the engine of

your motor car

microcosm which satisfies

many problems and which offers many interesting
A friend of
opportunities for manual activity.

who

is

little

a prominent surgeon, gets most of

his joy in life from tinkering with the engine
of his car. You may be sure that when he is not

mine,

is

operating he

is

in his garage.

do not know how

know that he has

he has owned, but I

taken every car that he has ever possessed

many

cars

202

to pieces

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

and put it together again at least two or three

times.
His surrender to the beautiful mechanics
of an engine gives him a sense of release from the
arduous mechanics of surgery.
Other people

who

are fortunate

enough

to live near the water

same interest in a boat. Guns,

and flies also are interesting hobbies

find the
rods,

who

are disciples of
For women there are

Nimrod
all

fishingto those

or Isaak Walton.

the handicrafts involved

in the arts of sewing, cooking, and

household economy. Some women assume their

in the

home,

household work

drudge, and therefore it is

more difficult for them than if they

always
decided to

as a

make

it

an

art.

There

is

almost

nothing in the world which cannot be transformed

into an art if you are so minded to do it, and sometimes these arts prove to be very valuable. For
example, a patient of mine was always very proud

which she arranged the cupboards

in her home, and all the neighbours used to
admire her beautiful arrangements and her practiof the

way

in

cal devices for utilizing the space in her cupboards.

This interest of hers, which was first a hobby only

in her

her

life

own home, became

that she

made

it

later so

important in

into a business

203

when

the

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
force of circumstances compelled her to seek a
means of earning her own living. To-day she

supports herself and her two children by arranging

and equipping cupboards for her friends and

their friends who have heard of her unusual
Another patient of mine developed the
ability.
art of making preserves to such an extent, that
what was at first simply a household activity
became later a very profitable business for her.
not a bit unusual in these days, when the
ordinary sources of support have sometimes
It is

been summarily cut short, that individuals who

have well developed hobbies have been able to

make vocations out

of their avocations.

Naturally

any human being whose avocation is so interesting

and useful that other people will pay for
gone a long way towards success in life.

We

come now

and by

to the conclusion of

it,

has

our plan,

time you are in a position to chart

for yourself your actual status in the world.
It
might be a very good idea if you first took a
this

piece of paper and made a rough chart with all

the spokes and all the levels drawn on it, and

made

a tentative picture of yourself

204

and your

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

development along each of the spokes. Then

lay this aside for a few days and think about your

own

evaluation of yourself, and after a few days

take the same chart and make any amendments

would be a
good thing to take this picture of yourself and
discuss it either with your husband or your wife,
or some very close and trusted friend who knows
you and sees at what points you agree and at what

that

you wish.

Then, perhaps,

it

Then I suggest that you

points you disagree.
take the lowest evaluation of yourself, and for
each one of the spokes on our wheel of successful
living

make

a plan, in so far as

you

are able, for

yourself. This plan should not be rigid and should

be just a general idea of where you want to arrive
five years

from to-day.

When you

have com-

pleted a five-year programme of development on

all the spokes of your life, then I want you to

make another plan and put down what you think

you could accomplish of your five-year plan in
one year. It is wise to begin at your weakest point
and develop your weakest point to the degree of
your general average. Always remember that a
successful life must appear graphically as a circle.
If you have been honest with yourself, your
o*

205

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

diagram of your own personality probably looks

like a many-pointed star, with some points
jotting out to the level of maturity and other
points

being

indented

Take

infantile levels.

to

or

adolescent

even

the deepest indentations

and begin with those. When you have completed

both your five-year plan and your one-year plan,
I want you to make still a third plan, and that is
what you can accomplish along this line in a
month, and finally I want you to make a fourth
plan, and that is what you can do to develop
yourself on the spoke that you have chosen
as the most important and immediate problem in
your

life

to-day.

You see, I have had a great deal of experience

with human beings and I know that they are
inclined to substitute wishes and dreams and hopes
for actual concrete plans.
I think it was Carlyle

who gave

as advice to a friend

who was

in con-

fusion and doubt as to what course he should

follow, the beautiful
that lies nearest/

command

It is

"
:

Do

the duty

unwise to substitute your

and wishes of your perfected self for the

immediate problem of improving yourself. Plans
desires

are only valuable in so far as they are completely

206

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
poor man to say
It is my plan in five years to be the governor of
"
the Bank of England, even though this might
It is

practicable.

no use for

"

be a laudable wish or ambition, it would be better

"
for him to say
How can I earn one shilling
:

week more than

am

earning

now/ and

to

devote himself to this immediate goal.

In a
similar fashion, it would be very well for a person

who
"

and unfriendly life to say

want to love the whole of humanity." The
lived

an

isolated

probability is that the less developed you are in a

certain spoke on the wheel of successful living,

the

more ambitious you

and often impossible

ous

away.

The
:

possible plan

be to make tremend-

improvements right

essence of a successful

three things

plan

will

life

lies

in

the intelligence to make a

second, the courage to work for that
first,

third, the

patience required in finding

satisfaction in tiny,

sometimes infinitesimal im-

Personal ambition,
provements day by day.
rashness, and impatience are the worst possible

methods of approach to the man who is isolated

and realizes that he ought to come into closer
contact with humanity and who, therefore, makes
it his ambition to love all of
So
humanity.

207

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
perhaps to save him from himself,
counsel that he

he

first

do

would

smile at his neighbour, that

a friendly turn for someone he has
first

considered his enemy, that he first speak a kind

word to his mother-in-law. If you are not careful
in choosing your goal, the likelihood is that you

your goal so high that you will discourage yourself from making any efforts, and in
a few weeks your resolutions and good intentions

will

set

have been forgotten and your plans and

diagrams will have been lost, and you will be back
will

again muddling through life in the same unsuccessful way that you used to follow before you
read this book.

It is a
still

human,

all

too

human,

fault that

savages at heart and want to succeed

of some magic.

Let

me

we

by

are

virtue

you something about

have made for you, and
tell

these diagrams that I

that is practise the suggestions that I have out-

There is nothing magical about them,

and there is no panacea for all human ills in my
words. I am not a new messiah and I do not ask

lined.

you to say that you believe in my words.

you only to try my advice day by day.
208

I ask

The

SUCCESSFUL LIVING

magic that
it

is

lies

in

my

Ask any

whom you know how

he

is

not magic at

all,

simply the force of common-sense and

intelligence.

if

advice

human being

successful

he became

successful,

and

not too busy living to answer your

is

question, I am sure that he will tell you more or

less the same things that I have advised
you to

Perhaps he will have greater genius in

explaining his meaning, and perhaps he will have

do.

some few

of technique which I have

omitted, either because I do not know them or
because space has been too short to cover all the
tricks

am

essence, I

But in

sure that this successful

human

being will give you more or

Now

human

soul.

multifarious activities of the

less

the same advice.

up to you to begin, start with little

things and work up gradually to more difficult
things. If you feel that you need specific instruction, go to those about you who have apparently
succeeded along the spoke in which you need
it

is

advice.

successful

human

being will always

be courteous and patient and helpful. Do not

be afraid to make mistakes. Perhaps this is the

most important single advice that

Nothing

in life

is

perfect.

209

can give you.

As the

great Irish

SUCCESSFUL LIVING
poet and writer, James Stephens, wrote in his
"
nothing is
lovely book The Crock of Gold,
You will not
perfect, there are lumps in it."

make a success of your life to-morrow or next

month or five years from now. Successful living
or success in

life, is

movement toward

not a thing,

a vague goal.

limitations to

a process, a
There are no

it is

your development, if you begin

with the little things and are not too ambitious
for a quick and magical success.

THE END